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Advanced Presenter Modes in MS Teams

Last updated on February 9, 2024

Tools: Microsoft Teams

If you teach courses online, you’re probably familiar with sharing your screen in your class meetings on Teams. Teams recently launched an update that provides you with multiple presentation modes.  You can now share your screen and your webcam feed simultaneously in several different formats. When used appropriately, these new presentation modes can better simulate a live classroom lecture and enhance instructor presence. This can also keep your students more engaged as it breaks up the monotony of staring at a shared screen.

We invite you to explore the advanced features in Teams as demonstrated in the video presentation below (this presentation assumes a basic level of familiarity with using Teams and conducting meetings, but even if you haven’t used Teams before, it will help you identify online presentation options). If you are new to Teams or inexperienced with presenting in Teams meetings, we advise you to reference CTLD’s collection of tutorials at ready.msudenver.edu, particularly the Download and Install MS Teams and Use Microsoft Teams to Host Live Lecture Sessions tutorials.

Best Practices

  • Plan ahead for presentations where you intend to use advanced presentation modes and ensure that content will not be obscured or unreadable.
  • Side-by-Side and Reporter Mode will shrink your screen to display alongside you. This could make reading or viewing content difficult for students, especially those viewing on small screens like phones. If you’re displaying content with lots of text, consider increasing the font size or sticking with the standard Content Only option.
  • Test presenter modes before meetings to familiarize yourself with the windows and controls that will be available.
  • Use the controls while presenting to switch between different modes fluidly and without interrupting your presentation.

Let’s walk through it together

  1. Open the MS Teams application on your computer.
  2. Start a Meeting.
    • You can start an empty meeting in a test team if you would like to test these features before a class.
  3. Click Share Content in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
  4. Click one of the Presenter Modes in the top right-hand corner of the Share content tray.
    • The first presenter mode, Content Only, is the default mode you might be most familiar with. This will only share the contents of the screen or window you elect below. Selecting any of the following options will also open a preview window of what your audience sees. You can close that if you prefer.
    • The second option, Standout Mode, will place your webcam feed as an overlay in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen-share. It will automatically crop the background of your webcam feed from the image.
    • The third option, Side-by-Side Mode, will show your screen and webcam feed side-by-side.
    • The fourth option, Reporter Mode, will place your webcam feed on the right hand side, edit out and replace the webcam background, and place your screen feed to your left.
  5. Hover your cursor near the top of the screen while sharing to show the Presentation Mode controls.
    • The four presentation mode options will be displayed here so you can swap between them without interrupting your presentation.