Temporary over-capacity in teaching rooms
Guidance for temporary/unanticipated over-capacity of teaching rooms at UCC
Version number: 1.0
Review date: 29 January 2025
Owner: Vice President for Learning and Teaching
Approval Body: Academic Board
Next Review: Three Year
Contents
- Purpose of this guidance
- Scope
- Intersecting guidance and information
- Suggested approaches for managing temporary over-crowding in teaching rooms
- Other resources
- Related documents and links
- Further Information
Purpose of this guidance
On occasion, such as at the start of semester as students are switching module enrolments, a teaching space may unexpectedly experience a temporary mismatch between demand for seating and that room’s capacity in the context of fire safety regulations. There are typically over 5,000 modules in UCC’s annual Book of Modules and unforeseen over-capacity issues may sometimes occur. Over-capacity is usually a temporary and manageable situation. This guidance relates to organisational management of over-capacity of teaching spaces and is not intended to be read as a guide to pedagogical techniques for teaching large group classes.
Scope
This guidance applies to all teaching activity that occurs in the University, and to all staff delivering that teaching activity.
Intersecting guidance and information:
A list of all of UCC’s centrally booked teaching rooms’ capacities is published here: Room Facilities & Capacities UCC.
Currently, the largest teaching room in UCC is Boole 4 with a capacity of 392. As few as 0.1% of modules in the 2024/25 Book of Modules have greater than 392 registered students.
UCC’s Buildings & Estates has published useful guidance in its Room Usage Guide which states that:
“Each lecture room has a maximum capacity. This is the maximum number of people that should be in the room at any given time. It is not permitted to exceed this capacity. If student numbers exceed the capacity of the room, contact the Departmental Timetabler in your relevant School/Department. The Departmental Timetabler will then contact the Room Bookings Office to attempt to rectify the situation.
As the employers representative the lecturer must immediately deal with any overcrowding that arises at any given time, during the course of a lecture, whether foreseeable or not. If a situation develops for any reason where there is more people present in the room that the seated capacity or if exits or aisles become compromised by persons standing, or should bags, equipment, cloaks or other loose items intrude upon escape routes, aisles or gangways, then the lecture should not continue or indeed should be deferred/delayed until this is satisfactorily resolved.”
Under no circumstances should a lecture proceed if the maximum capacity of the room is exceeded.
Suggested approaches for managing temporary over-crowding in teaching rooms:
Notwithstanding the guidance in the Room Usage Guide to defer or delay delivery of teaching while resolving temporary over-capacity issues, alternative responses might be considered before deferring teaching, if safe to do so. At all times ensuring the immediate health and safety of our University community members trumps all other considerations but staff may consider deploying alternate strategies for managing other than delaying teaching activity, if safe to do so.
During the recent Covid19 pandemic, public health regulations mandated the management of ‘social distancing’ within the confines of physical space capacities while continuing delivery of teaching activity. Planned approaches employed during the pandemic in UCC might inspire responses to other dynamic or unexpected mismatches between demand for seating and room capacity. Such interventions might include default live-streaming and/or recording all live-teaching using UCC’s lecture capture software, currently Panopto, or cohorting.
Cohorting or ‘Synchronous Distributed Blended Learning’ is an approach whereby a lecturer may decide (in advance or when dealing with an unexpected overcrowding event) to, for example, split the student group into two alternating clusters (grouped perhaps by A-M and N-Z surname or equivalent equitable sorting) and simultaneously prioritising one group with live in-person teaching while the alternate group attends online in ‘no interaction’ mode (e.g. via live-stream/broadcast using UCC’s lecture capture software, Panopto). The cohorts might alternate every other day or any other frequency the lecturer is best positioned to determine. Cohorting does not entail multiple deliveries of a lecture, only multiple delivery modes during a single teaching period.
If you continue to experience any challenges that are not resolved by either natural return to room at- or under-capacity, or active management using strategies such as cohorting, you might consider booking alternative internal and external venues and more information on these options are available on the Room Bookings webpages: Alternative Room Options UCC
All staff involved in timetabling activity are encouraged to conduct regular reviews of room occupancy to ensure, in so far as possible, that rooms are being allocated on the basis of student need.
Other resources:
IT Services’ webpages contain lots of helpful information on Teaching With Panopto; Teaching with Teams; Teaching with Canvas and has lists of classrooms and corresponding AV facilities in each teaching room. Learning and Teaching Services UCC |
The Centre for Digital Education (CDE) regularly provides training events, both online and in-person, for staff and advertises their training schedules through Workvivo, email and their SharePoint site. The CDE also offers 1:1 consultations and their focus tries to bridge the gap between learning theory and practice, so can focus on tools such as Canvas, but also addresses concepts such as engagement and digital confidence as needed. Centre for Digital Education UCC.
UCC’s Policy for recording live teaching to assist student study is available on the Academic Policy and Document Portal, available here: Learning and Teaching | University College Cork
Feedback and ideas are always welcomed at Office of the Vice President for Learning at contact email address ovplt@ucc.ie
Related documents and links
Learning and Teaching Services UCC
Learning and Teaching Services UCC
Room Facilities & Capacities UCC.
Further Information
Conatct email: ovplt@ucc.ie
Contact name: Vice President for Learning and Teaching
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