MICROSOFT TEAMS RESOURCES
Below are a range of resources that include both pedagogical considerations and technical steps on how to best utilise Microsoft Teams in your teaching practice.
Resource 1: Designing collaborative learning using Microsoft Teams
Resource 1: Designing collaborative learning using Microsoft Teams
How does collaboration happen in Microsoft Teams?
The word collaboration conjures up different things for different people, and you and often think of a group of people coming together to solve a complex problem or generate an artefact. The following video explains how Microsoft Teams can facilitate collaborative learning.
Why does Microsoft Teams promote collaboration?
If you consider how students currently engage with collaborative learning tasks/projects, they are often left to decide what software they use and how they use it. This leads to students using multiple software for multiple purposes and can lead to systems fatigue. Microsoft Teams eliminates this as all the collaboration happens in one space; from conversation/discussion; to artefact generation; to meetings; and planning of tasks. Rather than communicating via email, you can tag people and get a direct reply in a familiar manner.
Students and academics can also personalise their space by adding tabs and apps that they want to use. Take it another step further and all of your content can be hosted within Microsoft Teams so students don’t need to go outside of Microsoft Teams.
Evidence student learning
Central to Microsoft Teams is transparency and the ability for students to evidence their contribution to a project. They can do this by sharing their contribution through conversation and artefact generation.
Through ‘Manage team > Analytics’ as a facilitator you can also see how many ‘active users’ there are; as well as when and how many messages there are.
Tips to develop collaborative learning tasks
Through interviews with academics and researching the use of Microsoft Teams in teaching and learning, the following should be considered when developing collaborative learning tasks with Microsoft Teams:
- Develop a project that spans an appropriate amount of time across the trimester to promote active engagements;
- Be explicit on the purpose of Microsoft Teams for staff and students;
- Consider the set up of the Microsoft Team as it can be hard to facilitate and manage multiple teams from an academic perspective;
- Develop tasks that are authentic to their industry context so the use of Microsoft Teams is reflective of professional practice;
- Scaffold the collaborative learning task so there are key milestones for students to evidence;
- Provide support resources for students such as the Good practice guide for using Microsoft Teams
Before You Get Started
Collaboration in Microsoft Teams – Explore how Microsoft Teams can be used as a collaboration hub in Higher Education and how it can enhance collaborative learning
Watch this overview of Microsoft Teams to review the basic, and most common features of Microsoft Teams.
Complete this Microsoft Teams interactive demo to explore the basic functionality.
RESOURCE 2: AN OVERVIEW OF MICROSOFT TEAMS
What are the key features of Microsoft Teams?
- to find your way around Microsoft Teams – a high level overview of the Microsoft Teams in education.
- What are teams and channels? – use this for an overview of the structure of Microsoft Teams in educuation.
- Foster classroom collaboration – learn how to foster collaboration through one on one chat or group chat.
- File saving and sharing – this resource shows how files are saved and stores and how you can use this feature as an Educator.
- How to use apps within Microsoft Teams – how to use education apps within the Microsoft Team.
- Video chat and virtual meetings – this will help you to understand how to use video chat and meetings feature within education. Please note: you will not see the calendar functionality unless you are on Exchange Online and most staff are on the on premises version of Exchange. Students will see this functionality as they are on Exchange Online.
Getting to know the Microsoft Teams canvas
Know the basics but want to know more about the activity feed and notifications? Use this section to explore the Microsoft Teams canvas a little more.
- Explore your activity feed – to find a summary of everything that’s happened in the Teams you are a part of will appear in this feed. Find out what all the different symbols mean.
- Overview of notifications – the six things you need to know about managing notifications in your Teams.
- Personalise your notifications – check your settings for your notifications and personalise your space.
- Pin a Team or Channel – want to prioritise your workspace; use this to pin a team or channel.
- Use the search function – can’t find an old message, or chat? Use the search function to find them.
- Tips and tricks – six key things you need to know including tips on chat, formatting, and searching and hiding messages.
RESOURCE 3: Collaborating with Microsoft Teams
Before you get started using Microsoft Teams it is critical to know its role and purpose in the context of your unit. It is important that the collaborative learning task supports the purpose for using Microsoft Teams. If you need some inspiration, please visit When would I use Microsoft Teams?
Creating a Team
- Type of team – before you get started you need to decide which team type you will collaborate using. It is recommended that you use Class so you can access Classroom OneNote or Other if you are not interested in using OneNote in your unit.
- Roles and purposes – outlines the difference between owners, members, guests.
- Teams versus channels – common misconception of the different terminology.
- Add members to a team – this shows you how to add members and guests to a team. Please note, if you would like to invite a ‘guest’ you can; this is a member from outside Deakin University.
- Find or join a team – there are many different Teams already in existence that you may wish to search for and join.
- Show or hide a team or channel – customise your workspace to reflect what you want to see.
- Moderate roles and settings – by default, everyone can post, react and reply to non-private channels. If you want to manage this, you can determine what permissions individuals have.
Communicating in Microsoft Teams
- Create and format a post – want to get started by posting a message in the channel but need to know more about formatting?
- Create an announcement – sometimes you need a message to stand out; with a headline and an image.
- Send a message to a channel – this will show how to send a message to a channel in teams.
- Post to multiple channels – if you need to share an announcement across multiple teams, rather than post in individual channels, you can post the same message to multiple teams and channels.
- One-on-one and team chat – get started with one on one or group chat.
- Private chat with one person – how to start chats and make audio calls.
- Make some files ‘Read-only’ – use this when you would like students to have ‘read-only’ access to files.
RESOURCE 4: What are others doing?
Microsoft Teams is evolving in the Higher Education space as we continue to promote work integrated learning. The following examples demonstrate different ways in which Microsoft Teams is being used in Education.
USE CASE 4 – Dr David Kellerman with Microsoft Teams at UNSW
See how Dr David Kellerman from University of NSW implemented Microsoft Teams in an Engineering cohort of 5000 students with on and off campus students. He explains the purpose of choosing Microsoft Teams and the impact it has had on his teaching and students.
Watch how he has implemented Microsoft Teams.
USE CASE 5 – Esam Baboukhan using Mirosoft Teams for accessibility at the City of Westminister College
The City of Westminister College uses technology to ensure students have the necessary skills to succeed in future jobs. They implemented Microsoft Teams to make it seamless for students to collaborate on projects; to communicate with peers easier and connect with the teacher and have a conversation in real-time.
Watch eLearning Manager, Esam Baboukhan explain how Microsoft Teams has made his classroom more inclusive and enabled all of his students to connect.
USE CASE 6 – Watch Dr Timothy Ponce enhance communication at University of Texas Arlington
Dr Timothy Ponce is a Professor of English where some of his students were struggling with their coursework and didn’t reach out to him or their peers for help. Although there were multiple communication channels available, he wanted to reduce the number of tools that the students were accessing so he introduced Microsoft Teams.
Watch him explain what he did and the impact it had on his students here.
RESOURCE 5: How do I get started?
To get started:
- Consider how you can use Microsoft Teams to facilitate collaborative learning by using this tip sheet.
- Download the Microsoft Teams application to your device.
- Register for a Microsoft Teams workshop to understand the capability of Microsoft Teams in a teaching and learning context.
- If you would like further information then complete Microsoft Teams Essential Training on Lynda.com [use your SSO].
RESOURCE 6: What's new with Microsoft Teams?
RESOURCE 6: What’s new with Microsoft Teams?
This will be updated with what’s new in Microsoft Teams.
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Email eSolutions: deakin@service-now.com
Phone support: 1800 463 888
Hours of support:
Monday to Friday: 8:00am – 8:00pm
Saturday to Sunday: 11:00am – 5:00pm
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Phone support: 1800 463 888
Hours of support:
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- Saturday to Sunday: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Design issues
Email eSolutions: deakin@service-now.com
Phone support: 1800 463 888
Hours of support:
- Monday to Friday: 8:00am – 8:00pm
- Saturday to Sunday: 11:00am – 5:00pm
FACULTY
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