The COVID 19 pandemic has forced educationist to come up with innovative solution in delivering engaging synchronous online delivery of lectures. An innovative collaborative teaching approach was used to teach a large-scale Freshers Programming Course. A team of up to six academics acted as a resource panel in teaching synchronous online lectures. These interactive sessions were led by a moderator asking the resource panel questions about the content of the lecture. This was done in the same spirit of how a panel discussion would be conducted led moderator in a conference. Microsoft Teams Live was used in the delivery of the content to an audience of up to 800 students. Delivering a freshers programming course is known to be challenging in face to face delivery. A collaborative programming environment was used to engage students in live coding activities during the lectures. Students had opportunities to interact with the resource panel through quizzes, QA and through coding activities. We also introduced innovative use of QR codes to get students engagement through a mobile device for the interactive sessions. A resulting survey student found the collaborative teaching approach of conducting the webinar highly effective over a traditional one academic approach of conducting webinars. They had a high rating for the interactive programming environment (Repl.IT) allowed the resource personal to check the programs submitted by the students during synchronous sessions conducted. The best practices used in delivering this course can be easily adopted in delivering highly engaging online lectures for other courses.