For a student logging into a live session in one of Boston University’s online graduate programs, the experience can look deceptively simple: a faculty member appears on screen, classmates join from around the world, and the class begins.
What students don’t see is everything happening around that moment.
Behind each live online class is a coordinated team of producers, technicians, learning facilitators and instructional designers working alongside faculty members to create an experience designed specifically for working professionals. Cameras are positioned, audio is monitored, presentations and video are queued, graphics appear at the right moment, student questions are managed, and faculty are supported throughout the session.
The goal is not to showcase the technology. It is to make the technology disappear.
“If we do our jobs right, no one knows we exist,” said George Vago, Executive Director of Live Studio & Media Center Operations at BU Virtual.
That philosophy is at the heart of the BU Virtual model. The studios and production capabilities are tools that enable something larger: a high-quality, faculty-led learning experience that can connect working professionals to their professors and peers wherever they are in the world.
For students balancing graduate education with careers, families and other responsibilities, flexibility matters. A student may join a live class after a full day at work. Another may be participating from a different time zone. Others may rely on recordings to keep up with coursework around demanding schedules.
But flexibility is only part of the experience. The goal is not simply to make a traditional lecture available online. In BU’s online graduate programs, students are expected to participate, collaborate and apply what they are learning—working with faculty and peers on real-world problems and engaging in the kind of discussion and interaction that makes a classroom feel like a shared space, even when students may be thousands of miles apart.
Creating that experience requires more than a camera and a laptop.
Online education isn’t about replicating a lecture on a screen. It’s about creating an environment where students can engage with faculty, collaborate with their peers and work on meaningful, real-world problems together.
Wendy Colby – Vice President & Associate Provost at BU Virtual and the Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
The BU Virtual studios are purpose-built environments designed around the demands of live online teaching. The technology, room configuration, cameras, lighting and production systems are carefully integrated to support faculty as they teach and students as they participate. Just as important is the expertise of the people operating that environment: producers, technicians, learning facilitators and instructional designers who understand not only the technology, but how it can be used to support teaching and learning.
The result is an online classroom designed to feel less like a broadcast and more like a place where people are learning together.
“For us, online education isn’t about replicating a lecture on a screen. It’s about creating an environment where students can engage with faculty, collaborate with their peers and work on meaningful, real-world problems together,” said Wendy Colby, Vice President & Associate Provost at BU Virtual and the Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. “The studio and the team behind it give faculty the tools and support to create that kind of experience, so that students can feel as though they are in the room together, even when they’re joining from different parts of the world.”
Behind the scenes, the BU Virtual team is often working across those same time zones, with early mornings and late evenings helping make that global classroom possible. The work may be invisible to students, but it is essential to creating an experience that feels immediate, connected and human.
Technology in Service of Teaching
The technology behind the experience is sophisticated, but its value is measured by what it allows faculty and students to do.
One example is the studio’s transparent lightboard, a large sheet of illuminated glass that allows faculty to write while continuing to face students. Using fluorescent markers, instructors can work through equations, illustrate concepts or map out ideas while maintaining eye contact with the camera.
Lead Media Producer Ed Wozniak demonstrated how the technology works. As an instructor writes on the glass, the production team flips the image so students see the writing correctly. It is another way for students to interact with the professor and engage with the course material.
“It’s a way of helping them be more engaged,” Wozniak said, “so that we are not filming a faculty member writing on a whiteboard, with their backs to the camera.”
The Work Students Never See
The studio team is only one part of the work that happens behind each live session.
Long before a class begins, instructional designers work with faculty to think through how course material will be presented and how students will engage with it. Course design can begin months before a live session, with teams considering learning activities, student interaction, presentations, video and other media.
Learning facilitators then remain closely involved throughout the course. Many have master’s or doctoral degrees and expertise in their fields, allowing them to support faculty while also serving as resources for students. They answer questions, host office hours, help facilitate activities and support students as they work through course material.
That collaboration is particularly important in programs serving hundreds of students. The goal is to create an experience that feels personal and interactive even as programs grow.
The production team works with the same intention. Before each live class, presentations, graphics, videos and other materials are prepared and tested. During the session, producers and technicians monitor the technical environment while supporting faculty and keeping an eye on student participation.
Even small details can contribute to the experience. Music may play as students enter the virtual classroom—sometimes a professor’s favorite song, sometimes a selection connected to that day’s lesson.
“We had a case study that had to do with coffee, so I played ‘Espresso,’” Technical Producer Mike Cohen said with a laugh. During a stretch of particularly hot weather, the team selected “Hot Hot Hot.”
“No one will ever know that’s my playing,” he said.
The moment may be fleeting, but it reflects the team’s larger philosophy: an online class is still a human experience. The goal is to create an environment where students feel welcomed, engaged and ready to participate from the moment they arrive.
A Classroom Without Borders
For the people working behind the scenes, the global nature of BU’s online graduate programs is part of the everyday work.
A live class may bring together students from different cities, states and countries, each arriving with different professional experiences and perspectives. For working professionals, that diversity can become part of the learning experience itself. Students aren’t simply consuming course material; they are learning alongside peers who may approach the same problem from entirely different industries, communities and parts of the world.
The technology helps make that exchange possible, but the people behind it help make it meaningful.
Students see their faculty. They see their classmates. They ask questions, exchange ideas, work through problems and apply what they are learning.
They may never see the producer switching camera angles, the technician monitoring audio, the learning facilitator coordinating an activity or the instructional designer who helped shape the course months earlier.
That is the point.
“We’re bringing the classroom to them since they can’t come to us,” Vago said.
And behind that simple idea is an entire team making sure the classroom is ready—wherever in the world the student may be.
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