Using Equipment - Your Responsibilties!  Whether you plan to use the permanently installed or booked equipment in any of the teaching rooms it is your responsibility to ensure that you know how to use the facilities. If you are unsure what equipment you need, or how to operate it, please contact the Technical Support Team in advance and they can demonstrate it for you and advise on best practice. The Technical Support Team can be contacted on 6499.

To book equipment, email avs@qub.ac.uk

Fault Reporting: A prominent notice in all rooms has contact details for teaching staff to report faults with the equipment or summon ‘emergency’ help.  The emergency help line 6499 tries a number of different extensions until answered, so please be patient.  In most cases, we can resolve the problem over the phone, but in the rare occasions when we cannot, we would expect to have a member of technical staff on site within 10 minutes of being contacted.

Duty Times: Technical assistance is available 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.  Note: Media Services has a Service Level Agreement for this service.

Information Services has introduced an "Interactive Lecture Theatre" service, using a Personal Response System (PRS), which encourages a much richer form of engagement between lecturer and student.

Lecturers pose questions using an enhanced version of Powerpoint. Students ‘vote’ using simple handsets. The results can then be summarised and reflected back to the class, ‘instantly’ in the form of charts such as pie charts or bar graphs. The service potentially, could support any class size up to 750 students. 

While simple in context, this system is extremely effective at developing new forms of teacher - student engagement. A simple “what do you think” question with four options can become the starting point for rich debate, while mcq type questions can test knowledge on a regular basis so ensuring that the class is in touch with the course being taught. The system can also support collaboration and peer support through group engagement.

Before you book the Personal Response System (PRS), you must attend the "Using the PRS in your Classes" course, which is bookable through Queen's Online.

If you are interested in using the PRS to create an interactive leature, visit the Centre for Educational Development website, where there is a wealth of information including:

• Guidelines for use of the PRS
• Why use the PRS in lectures?
• Case Studies on the use of PRS in Queen's
• Useful Links to Related Articles

If you require additional support with using the PRS, email David Robinson.

Central Teaching Room Support: The creation and support of the University's teaching environment is a joint responsibility of the Estates Department and Audio Visual Services and a rolling plan is in place to improve both the fabric and the technology in centrally booked teaching rooms.  The priority for putting fixed installations into individual teaching rooms is based on a number of factors:

• Creating state-of-the-art facilities
• The difficulty in supporting particular accommodation from the perspective of both remoteness/access difficulties and technical cover
• The Health and Safety implications of trailling leads and intrusive floor stands associated with temporary loan equipment in crowded teaching rooms
• Frequency of current delivery of computer presentation systems from Media Services loan stock
• User feedback from teaching staff
• Image improvement

There are currently over 100 centrally booked teaching rooms equipped with data projection facilities.

Teaching Room Design/Consultancy: Where schools or departments have a need for specialist technical installations to support teaching in their own rooms or laboratories, the technical support team can provide guidance, advice, costings and contacts with specialist manufacturers and suppliers.  The Technical Support Team can be contacted on 6499. 

Related services which may be of interest are:

• Conference Support
• Lecture Recording
• Video Conferencing
• Video Production