You may be wondering the best ways to leverage Teams to support teaching and learning regardless of teaching face-to-face, hybrid, or online. Many students will likely use Microsoft Teams in their future careers, so now is a great time to start learning how to use this platform to communicate, collaborate, share files, and manage projects! Here are a few teaching tips that we recommend to get started.
- MS Teams Canvas Integration. To get started using Teams in your class, use the Getting Started With Teams step-by-step guide complete with screenshots and a video resource. This process only needs to be followed once per semester in each class. Once the integration is set up, you and your students can access Teams through the desktop application or in the browser. Make sure to show students how to access the Team and explain how it will be used in your course.
- Student Engagement in Teams. In any teaching modality, you can use your class MS Team as a backchannel to facilitate communication between yourself and students during or outside of class. For example, you could create a Teams channel called “Questions and Answers” for students to post and respond to each other’s questions and share resources related the class, and/or a “Parking Lot” channel for students to pose questions during a lecture that you can address during a break. Teams channels also allow you to create a poll to anonymously check for understanding or quickly check in with students about how confident they are feeling about the material. Finally, you can create a recurring virtual meeting in the course Team to increase access to office hours for students who may not be on campus or prefer a virtual opportunity to connect.
- Group Work/Projects in MS Teams. Group projects are a great way to introduce students to the collaborative and technological skills they will need for future success in their careers. Within the MS Team for your course, you can create private channels for each of your groups so members can chat, organize shared files (without having to go back to their email each time!), set virtual meetings, and even record presentations to submit via Canvas. Teams also provides access to other Microsoft tools like Whiteboard, OneNote, and Project that integrate seamlessly and can enhance the group project experience.
To learn more about implementing these practices with Microsoft Teams, reach out to your college’s Academic Technology Specialist or request a consultation with the UTLC.