MS Teams for teaching guide

Consider the following:

• How do you plan on using Teams to add value to your teaching?
  • You might want to use Teams to act as a bridge between your synchronous online sessions and your asynchronous teaching. You could use Teams to help students to continue collaboration and discussion started in the Virtual Classroom.
  • You could use Teams to support community building and provide a space for students to get to know each other at the start of term and beyond.
  • You could use Teams to support project work.
  • Or you might want to use Teams for all of the above!
• How will your Team complement student activities on Moodle?

Once you know how you plan on using Teams and the interplay between Teams and Moodle, it will be much easier to structure your Team and to articulate to students why you are using Teams and how it will support their learning.

1. Select Teams from the sidebar. You may find it easier to view your Teams in a list rather than a grid to make it easier if you have multiple Teams.
2. Select the title for your module Team to view what channels are available and to add and re-organise content.

Channels organise all the files, conversations, and apps for a topic in one place.

Every class Team comes with a General channel. This channel has three tabs:

• The Posts tab for all the messages in the channel.
• The Class Files tab to store all the files shared in this channel. Lecturers can add Read-only files to the Class Materials folder. Students can read these files, but only lecturers can edit.
• The Class Notebook tab. By default, Class Notebooks have three sections designed to facilitate different type of activities:
  • Collaboration Space: for collaborative work among multiple students.
  • Content Library: for dissemination of content by the lecturer to the students.
  • Student Notebooks: for individual work by the student.

Tabs help you to highlight key information and links for students.  Add a tab to any channel by selecting the plus symbol a the top of the channel.

To help students to navigate between your Team and Moodle module you can add a link from Teams to Moodle and vice-versa.

1. Open the relevant Moodle module. Select and copy the URL.

   

2. Select the module Team.
3. Open the General channel.
4. Select the plus symbol at the top of the channel.<

   

5. Select Website from the Apps available.
6. Type Moodle Module as the Tab name.
7. Paste the Moodle module URL into the URL field.
8. You can decide whether to alert users to the new tab by keeping the Post to the channel about this tab checked.
9. Save.

   

10. A link to the Moodle module is now available to your students from the relevant module Team.
11. You can use this process to create Tab links to websites, files and apps that you want to highlight for students.

1. Select the Teams icon to display all your Teams.
2. Select the three dots menu on the relevant Team.
3. Select Get link to Team.

   

4. A pop-up message will display  with the link to the Team. Select Copy.
5. Go to the relevant Moodle module and Turn editing on. Open the section where you want the link to the Team display.
6. Add the Team link as a URL resource or as a descriptive link in a Label.

Related guidance

You can add an Insights tab to all the channels on your Team. This provides the lecturers and course office with information on students' progress and engagement on the channel.

1. Select the first channel in your Team and select the + symbol from the top of the channel.
2. Select Insights from the available Apps.
3. Select Add.
4. As only staff added as teachers can view this tab, uncheck the option Add a post back to the channel about this tab
5. Select Save.
6. Repeat this step for each of the channels in your Team.

Related guidance

You can turn the General channel into an announcements channel. This means that only staff added to the Team as Owners can post to the channel.  

1. Select the module Team.
2. Select the three dots menu to the right of the General channel and select Manage channel.

   

3. Select Only owners can post messages. 

    

Channels help you to keep collaboration, files and conversations organised by topics or projects. You might want to create additional channels to support small group collaboration and seminar discussions.

1. Open the Team.
2. Select the three dots menu next to your module Team’s name, select Add channel.

   

3. Enter a Name and an optional Description for your channel.
4. Choose whether you’d like your channel to be Standard or Private. Standard channels will be available to everyone. Private channels will only be available to students you choose. There are limitations to Private channels and these are described in the box below.

Please note that if you make your channels private that you will lose some functionality, including scheduling meetings using the Teams calendar and using the Insights tab. Therefore we recommend that you keep all channels open to the Team.

• The only exception is for group work channels where you do not plan on scheduling any group meetings via the channel and will rely instead on Teams Meetings organised via Outlook.
• Students can schedule their own synchronous meetings using the Meet button on the top of the private channel.
• With private channels, you will need to manually add the relevant students as members of the private channel.
• The Team Owner who creates the private channel becomes the owner of the private channel. Private channels can have different owners to the Team and staff are not automatically added as owners to the private channel. If you want all Teams Owners to be owners of the private channel you will need to manually add these staff as Teachers to the private channel. Guidance is available from Microsoft on what team owners and team members can see in private channels.

Related guidance