General advice for students joining SUPA courses

There are some courses which may use video conference links provided by the lecturer.  There are courses where we share links which use  Zoom, MS Teams or Webex.   Some courses may use recorded sessions rather than live lectures.  Details about how a course will be shared should be on the My.SUPA course page.  Students may join SUPA lectures from the classroom, desktop, laptop or mobile devices.  

We run small specialised classes which are shared across the participating SUPA universities a reciprocal basis, and we appreciate it when people join our live lectures and actively participate during the lectures and tutorials. 

Importance of joining timetabled lectures live

Many of the SUPA courses are offered as live video conferences, with recordings made as a convenience in case you need to catch up on a particular date.  Where a lecture has scheduled timetable and live lectures, we would strongly encourage you to join live at the scheduled time whenever possible. 

Joining lectures live at the scheduled lecture time really can help you. Research shows that students who join live have better learning outcomes.   It provides the opportunity to ask questions about the course and for active participation.  While we recognise this is not always possible, we would encourage you to join these courses at the scheduled time whenever you can.

Having some remote students join us live in every lecture is also crucial to help us spot and fix problems quickly with audio, video or screen sharing, and also to ask questions relevant to the remote students.  

Without this live feedback from remote students,  issues with lecture recording might not be noticed until you try to watch a recording several days later.   

Asking questions and feedback

When asking questions we know it is sometimes difficult to find the right time to interupt.  If you find that your lecture does not  notice real or virtual hand raising, you may need to interupt with  "hello, I have a question from (name of university)".

Your questions and feedback will help other people.   Everyone benefit from these questions, and also prompt feedback on technical issues. Without this feedback or questions to clarify details of the lecture there may be unresolved issues with any recorded content for those who are not able to join live.

Visibility and cameras

When you arrive in the classroom please use the CAM1/CAM2 buttons to select a camera and seat where you can be seen. If joining small classes or tutorials from a laptop or tablet, please consider turning on your camera for a short time at start of lecture.  This small step of making yourself a little more visible helps our staff to be aware of the SUPA students in the other universities.