Teaching & Meeting Rooms & Communal Spaces

Lectures, classes, reading groups etc should be held in the mezzanine teaching spaces. Tutorials should generally be held in colleges. It is permissible to conduct online interviews, including for admissions, and to present online teaching from office space. If there are issues where this guidance is problematic please seek further advice from the Director of IT & Physical Resources.

For health and safety reasons it is important that people consider the size of any meeting, class, seminar or lecture room and book the most appropriate room. Room capacities must not be exceeded.

The rooms can all be booked via the online room booking system. There is also specific information about rooms and facilities for conferences and events.

Available rooms, their capacities and facilities

Teaching spaces

All the teaching spaces are located on the mezzanine floor. They are:

The lecture theatres/rooms (L1-L6) each have 3 sets of roller white boards and dual projection AV systems (two screens), while the class rooms (C1-C6) have 2 sets of roller white boards and single projection AV systems (one screen). Each has two desktop PCs (Windows and Linux), plus connections for laptops (HDMI and USB-C for output; USB-A for input). The projectors run at Full HD (1920x1080) resolution.

The AV setup across these 12 rooms is designed to be familiar and as consistent as practical across the spaces for ease of use without significant demonstration or instruction. As you approach the lectern, the touchscreen will detect presence and light up. From the initial screen you can select what device you intend to use and the AV system will startup. In most cases you would select from the top row of buttons for projecting, but if you wished to initially just set yourself up via the lectern screen then use the bottom row instead.

The AV starts up in all rooms using just 1 projector and screen furthest from the lectern. In rooms with two projectors, if you choose a source for the second screen then that will come on and be shown there. You can also use the buttons for each source to blank or freeze the projector output, choose which input source's sound is output to the room, etc.

In the lecture theatres/rooms, there is also a document camera/visualiser in a drawer on the side of the lectern. To use it, pull out the drawer, pull up the visualiser camera arm until it locks in place, press the power button of the visualiser and then place your object/document on the device. Then select the visualiser as the source for one or both of the projection screens.

The lectern keyboard and mouse, plus main room camera and mic input, are automatically switched to the device chosen for for display on the lectern monitor. This allows the main room camera and microphones to be used within a Teams/Zoom call you run from the lectern desktops or your own laptop. In the case of a laptop, plug in the USB-A cable to connect the keyboard, mouse, main room camera and microphone inputs. (This is in addition to either the USB-C or HDMI cable, which output the video and audio from your laptop.)

When finished with the room AV, please use the power button icon on the touchscreen to turn off the system (return it to standby mode).

If you need further help with the system, for events contact @email and otherwise contact @email.

There is a general policy of no food or drink in the teaching rooms.

Video conferencing room (VC1)

There is also a 28 seat teaching room (phone 615198) at the mezzanine level for use by the Taught Course Centre (TCC) and other purposes.

The AV in this room is similar to other teaching spaces, but with some elements optimised for online teaching via Microsoft Teams. The room has a tracking camera, rather than a camera per whiteboard as in neighbouring rooms; it also has a Microsoft Teams Room system, as used in the meeting rooms, which in turn means the touchscreen controls are slightly different. The whiteboards in this room are 2 standard fixed whiteboards, rather than roller boards.

Please contact @email if you would like to know more about this facility.

Meeting rooms

The meeting rooms may not be used for teaching in general.

Refreshments for meetings may be consumed in meeting rooms, but they should not be used for consuming meals in in general.

The meeting rooms are:

The meeting rooms all have a large LCD screen for AV use, with a Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) system, and a whiteboard.

The AV across the meeting rooms is designed to be familiar and as consistent as practical across the spaces for ease of use without significant demonstration or instruction. There is a touchscreen control panel and connections on the meeting table.

When you schedule a Teams meeting in advance, invite the "Teams Room Name" above to the meeting (you may need to use the long form the first time you do this). You will then be able to start your meeting by selecting it on the touchscreen on the room meeting table.

If you have not scheduled the meeting in advance, you can start a new meeting straight from the touchscreen and invite all your participants.

If you have scheduled a meeting but not added the room in advance, you can enter the joining code on the touchscreen. Alternatively, use another device (mobile phone, tablet or laptop) to add the room to the meeting - either join a nearby meeting room, or add the room with the Teams Room Name listed above.

You can connect a laptop to the AV system using the cables in the centre of the table. If you connect the laptop via USB-C, it should pick up the room camera and audio feeds automatically. If you connect a laptop via HDMI, then you can use the room camera and microphone by additionally connecting the USB-A cable.

If you have joined a Microsoft Teams meeting from the touch screen, connecting a laptop to the USB-C or HDMI cable will share your screen into the meeting. Alternatively, you can join the meeting separately from the laptop and share the screen/window into the meeting that way.

If you need further help with the meeting room AV systems, for events contact @email and otherwise contact @email.

Other spaces

As well as the main bookable teaching and meeting spaces there are several other spaces in the building that could be used infrequently for events:

• Common Room (approx 100 seats)
• North Roof Terrace (4th floor) (12 seats)
• South Roof Terrace (3rd floor) (20 seats)
• Mezzanine north, central and south circulation spaces (overall 164 cafe seats with square tables plus further circulation/standing space for use with up to 180 additional seats with rectangular tables and 20 tall square poseur tables; often used as standing space for events, capacity across entire mezzanine 600)

Event Summary / Checklist for FM

If you are organising an event that is out-of-hours or requires some support from the Facilities Management team, then they require a completed event checklist (template available below) to be submitted to them in order that they can manage those arrangements.

The Events team manage an overarching view of all FM overtime bookings made by the department. Please consult with them as needed in advance of submitting an event checklist. Please be aware a failure to secure suitable overtime cover would result in an out-of-hours event having to be cancelled (i.e. we cannot breach university and legal compliance requirements for building and safety management).

Note an indicative cost of FM overtime cover is £40 per hour per FM person. For detailed costs (which will depend on the number of staff needed, whether there is overlap with other activities allowing for cost sharing, particular staff used etc) please consult with Events.