Category: Altamira Learning > Lezioni, Appelli e Materiale didattico

When you schedule a Virtual Classroom lesson, Altamira automatically creates the online meeting with the provider selected for the lesson (Google Meet or Microsoft Teams) and invites the teacher and the enrolled employees. This article explains who can do what during the lesson: admitting participants, muting microphones, sharing the screen, recording.

The three roles in an online lesson

Every online lesson involves three roles:

• Organizer: the company account configured for the video conferencing integration. It is the "owner" of the meeting and has full control over it. It is often a service account that does not attend the lesson.
• Teacher: the person assigned as the teacher of the lesson in Altamira. They receive the invitation with the link to join.
• Participants: the employees enrolled in the edition. They also receive the invitation with the link.

The actual permissions of each role during the meeting depend on the provider: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams behave differently, as described below.

Lessons with Google Meet

How you join the lesson

The meeting is created as open: anyone with the link can join directly, without waiting to be admitted. This also applies to teachers and participants outside the organization, so nobody is ever stuck in a waiting room.

What each role can do

The meeting is created with host management turned on: moderation controls are reserved for the organizer and for the people they promote to co-host. The teacher and the participants join with the same permissions.

How to give the teacher moderation controls

If you want the teacher to be able to mute participants, record the lesson or moderate the classroom, they must be promoted to co-host. The promotion is done manually in Google:

• Before the lesson: anyone with access to the organizer account's calendar can open the event in Google Calendar and add the teacher as a co-host.
• During the lesson: the organizer (or a co-host who has already joined) can promote the teacher from the "People" panel of the meeting.

Once promoted, the teacher gets the same controls as the organizer: mute everyone, remove participants, lock chat and sharing, record and end the meeting.

Note on recording: recording is only available if the company's Google Workspace edition includes it, and the file is saved to the organizer account's Drive.

Lessons with Microsoft Teams

How you join the lesson

People from the organization join the meeting directly. External participants go through the lobby instead: anyone already in the meeting as a presenter (teacher or participant) can admit them.

What each role can do

In Teams lessons, the teacher and the participants all join as presenters: they therefore have the same permissions, which include most meeting controls. Only a few actions remain reserved for the organizer.

How to limit participant permissions

If you prefer that only the teacher can share the screen, mute others or record, the teacher (or anyone who is a presenter) can demote the participants to the "Attendee" role during the meeting, from the Teams participants panel. Alternatively, the organizer can set "Who can present" in the meeting options before the lesson starts.

A participant demoted to "Attendee" can speak, use the chat and view shared content, but can no longer share the screen, mute or remove others, or record.

Note on recording: recording availability depends on the company's Microsoft 365 licenses and policies; the recording is saved to the cloud storage of the account that starts it.

Attendance tracking

Automatic attendance tracking does not depend on the roles described in this article: it is performed by Altamira after the lesson ends, with no action required from the teacher or the participants. For details, see the dedicated article on automatic attendance for online lessons.