Lecturing in the MD Program FAQs

Yes. 

• If you are teaching in a classroom and time allows, a technician will meet you before your lecture to orient you. Note that there is only a short break between lectures and if you are teaching directly after someone else, there may not be time to give you a full overview. If you need an orientation of the technology before you begin, please arrive 10 minutes before the scheduled start time of your lecture. A technician will be monitoring the lecture for any technical issues.
• If you are teaching remotely, a technician will be available online with you before the lecture begins and will be monitoring the lecture for any technical issues. If there are any issues getting set up or during the lecture and the technician needs to speak with you outside of the Zoom call, the cell number you provided will be used.

A technician from MedIT will schedule the Zoom session in advance, and will start the session 30 minutes before the scheduled lecture start time.

If you are teaching from home or other offsite location and your lecture is within a block of lectures, you will be joining a Zoom call already in progress. You will be able to see and hear the previous lecturer if they are still teaching (i.e., if they have not already finished and the students are not yet in their 10-minute break). Remain muted (camera and microphone off) until they have finished their lecture.

A: Yes.

MD Program lectures will begin at the scheduled start time. (Prior to 20/21, the actual start time was 10 minutes past the scheduled start time in accordance with general U of T scheduling.)

50-minute lectures: A 10-minute break will take place after your 50-minute lecture. For example, if your lecture is scheduled to begin at 10am, please begin your lecture at 10am and finish it by 10:50am.

1.5-hour and longer lectures: A 10-15 minute break will take place after your 1 hour 25 minutes of teaching.

It is important to begin and end on time, as the students will need a break to refresh and regroup, and to provide time for lecturer turnaround.

You will screen share and advance your slides:

• if you are in the classroom, screen share will be set up already and you will advance the slides
• if you are at home or other offsite location, the technician will tell you how to screen share if you are not familiar with it. You will advance your slides.

If are teaching in the classroom, the Zoom session will be connected before you arrive.

• you may receive an emailed Zoom link from the MD Program administrator for the course you are teaching. You can disregard this if you are teaching onsite; you can use this link if you end up teaching from home or another offsite location.
• if you are teaching from home or other offsite location, you will receive an email from the MD Program administrator (an @utoronto.ca email address) for the course you are teaching. Please watch for this email and flag it for easy referral.
• when you are ready to join the session, click the link in the email

If you are the first in a block of lectures (eg: the 9am lecture in a block that runs from 9am to 12pm), you should open your Zoom panelist link (sent to you by the MD Program administrator for the course you are teaching) for the lecture 25 minutes before the scheduled start time. The technician will have started the session 30 minutes before the scheduled start time of the first lecture in a block of lectures. Getting online early allows you and the technician an opportunity to make sure all of your equipment is working as expected and to troubleshoot any issues. If everything checks out, you can mute your mic and camera and do other things until the start time.

If you are teaching a class within a block of lectures (eg: you have the 10am slot, teaching after someone who started at 9am), you will have to wait until they are finished before you start interacting with the technician (except by private Zoom chat, which you can do anytime). You should arrange a time to meet with the technician at another time before your lecture if you know you will need pre-lecture support.

A: You may have co-lecturers, multiple panelists, or guests. A technician will help with the set up and technical aspects of this in advance and manage switching presenters during the session. There is a section in the Form to provide us with contact information for any other lecturers who may be involved in your session.

Your lecture, including your PowerPoint, your voice, and a small inset of your camera image, will be recorded and posted on the students' course website (password protected) for their review. The recording will be posted usually within 24 hours of the lecture taking place and remains available to students in that class until they graduate.

Students in the classrooms can use the tabletop microphones (mics) to ask their questions verbally, or they can use the Q & A function in Slido

How the student mics work:

• a student presses their mic button at either the MSB (downtown) or the HSC (Mississauga) classroom
• the mic goes live; the student knows it is live because there is a blue light around the button
• you will hear the student's question, whether the student is in the MSB or the HSC
• if another student presses their mic button when the first student's mic is live, the second student (and subsequent students) will go into a queue: when the first student turns off their mic, the second student's mic goes live, and so on
• if you need to stop taking questions and a student's mic is still live, you will need to let students know that the Q & A time is up for now, and ask them to turn off their mics.

IMPORTANT: Students must use the microphones if they are asking verbally; in other words, they should not ask questions without using their mic. The mics are used so that the students in the connected classroom and the students further away in the same room can hear. If a student in your classroom does ask you a question verbally and you choose to answer, it is important to repeat the question for the benefit of the connected classroom and those in the same room with you who are further back.

• Answering verbal questions may set a precedence and other students may be more encouraged to do the same, so trying to restrict it early may be the best strategy to make your lectures equitable to all students

Students can also use the Slido Q & A to ask questions

• Slido is the MD Program's new polling platform for use during lectures
• A second monitor has been added to the teaching stations in all of the large MD Program classrooms, both at the St. George and UTM campusses, for you to more easily see any incoming written questions
• You will answer the questions verbally
• When answering questions fro the Q & A, you should read out the question (or paraphrase it) so that students know which question you are answering
• If you are teaching from home or other offsite location, we recommend a second monitor or device for monitoring questions

If your lecture requires students to comment or ask questions differently from this default, please indicate this in the “Tell Us About Your Lecture” section of the Form.

If you are teaching in a classroom, yes:

• You will be able to see the other students that are in the classroom with you
•  You will see a wide shot of the classroom at the other campus (MAM students if you are teaching at MSB, MSB students if you are teaching at MAM) in a small inset in a monitor at the podium

If you are teaching from home or other offsite location, no:

• you will not be able to see or hear the students. The type of Zoom call that will be used for lectures will be a webinar, in which the online participants will be able to see and hear you, but you will not be able to see or hear them.

Interactivity is encouraged to help engage students during lectures. If you are teaching in the classroom, you will be using Slido for polling and other interactivity. Slido interactivity includes:

• multiple choice questions
• word clouds
• open text
• rankings
• quizzes
• Q & A

See the bottom of this page for a 2.5-minute video that give an overview of Slido: View Slido Video

If you are teaching remotely and wish to add interactivity, you can use the Zoom features, such as polling, whiteboards, and the Q&A function. 

Please include any questions for polling in your PowerPoint and we will add them to Slido or Zoom.

Plan in advance: staff requires time to add the polls to your presentation and cannot accommodate last-minute requests.

How to add the information to your presentation so we can turn it into interactive sessions:

1. In your PowerPoint presentation, add a slide where you want the polling question to appear. (Remember, if you are in the classroom, you will be using Slido, which can incorporate several different interactions--get creative!)
2. In that slide, write your question, the possible answers, and the correct answer (if applicable).
3. If using Zoom, add a slide and write the correct answer. Zoom polling does not automatically show the correct answer, so this step is so you can display the correct answer after the poll
4. Repeat these steps for every polling question in the presentation. Save your presentation and upload it using the presentation upload link.

If using Slido, students in both connected classrooms will see a QR code on the screen at the beginning of the lecture, which they will use to open the interactive session on their devices.

NOTE: if you had planned to run an interactive Slido presentation in the classroom and need to teach remotely instead, as a result of illness, for example, you will likely not be able to use your polls at all. Your Slido interactivity will not work on your home computer, and we will likely not have enough time to exchange the Slido questions for Zoom questions.

In order to prepare for your session, we recommend a test run with a MedIT technician if you are presenting from home or other offsite location, or a visit to the classroom if it will be your first time there. Please ensure you check off on the Lecturer Form that you would like to meet with a technician.

If you are presenting from home or other offsite location, it is important to be using the same location and equipment for the test as you will for the lecture.

This is to ensure that your presentation has no technical problems during delivery.
After submission, the presentation and any media will be tested, polling questions added, and any issues will be addressed. Because of the very full schedule of lectures, there is limited time for this testing to be carried out and hence the necessity of the 4-working day advance submission.

Your presentation will be loaded onto the PC in the room in which you are teaching, and open and ready for you when you arrive.

If you are teaching remotely, your presentation will also be loaded onto a computer at the technician's location, ready to be deployed by them if your sharing of the screen fails at any time during your presentation.

Please use the following naming convention for your PowerPoint or other presentations in order that we can correctly match it to the class you are teaching.

If you do not include the course and time of your lecture in the name of the PowerPoint, we may not be able to associate it with your lecture time. 

Course Code_YYYY-MM-DD-24HrTime_Name of presentation_Your last name_Part X (if there is more than one part of a presentation with the same name)

Eg:

MED100_2020-08-28-1330_Anatomy of the Thorax_Wiley_Part 2

Provide information regarding your lecture and upload your slides using this form.

• Watch the recording from the August 13th, 2021 webinar, Strategies for Effective Large Group eLearning: https://youtu.be/_NS868tzq0A.
• Additional resources including the webinar slides and tips for effective PowerPoint presentation may be found on the Office of Faculty Development website: https://ofd.med.utoronto.ca/resources/strategies-effective-large-group-elearning

For support regarding the scheduling and administrative aspects of MD Program lectures:

• MD Year 1 lectures: Olga Serebrennik (olga.serebrennik@utoronto.ca)
• MD Year 2 lectures: Austin Bayes (austin.bayes@utoronto.ca)
• MD Year 3 lectures: Shibu Thomas (shibu.thomas@utoronto.ca) 
• MD Transition to Residency lectures: Ezhil Mohanraj (ezhil.mohanraj@utoronto.ca)

If you have specific questions regarding technical requirements or any audio visual or technical issues, email MedIT Help Desk.

A: To rename yourself after you join the session:

1. click on the triple elipses at the top right of your video frame
2. click Rename on the box that appears, and change your name.

Your new name will appear to everyone in the meeting or webinar:

• at the bottom left of your video frame when your camera is on
• in place of your camera image when your camera is off

You may be entering a webinar already in session with another lecturer presenting to the group. It is common for MD Program and conference sessions to run for several hours, and you may be presenting in the middle of a longer session. When you enter the webinar, having your camera and microphone off will ensure that you do not disrupt a presentation already in session.

To enter all of your calls with camera and microphone off:

1. Open your Zoom app on your desktop
2. Click on Settings
3. On the Audio tab, click the checkbox 'Always mute the microphone when joining a meeting' at the bottom of the screen
4. On the Video tab, click the checkbox ' Always turn off video when joining meeting' at the bottom of the page under the Meetings heading