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Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) allows you to easily and securely collaborate and share information with teammates. It is possible to create a Teams environment for your course from within a Canvas course to complement the primary educational processes that take place in Canvas. Teams can be used by faculty, students, and staff from inside and outside the UvA. When you create documents within a Team, they will be stored on Sharepoint, not on your personal OneDrive.
With this tool, as a teacher, I can:
- easily create teams and (public/private) channels from a Canvas course;
- confer online by video calling and chatting;
- use Microsoft Whiteboard, screen sharing, file sharing, PowerPoint Live and break out rooms (up to 300 participants) during a meeting
- record meetings (after obtaining permission from participants);
- encouraging colleagues and students to share files within a channel (via Sharepoint);
- work on files with multiple people at the same time (synchronously).
Watch an impression of Microsoft Teams
Why should I use this tool?
- You can facilitate low-threshold forms of communication with students and students among themselves.
- Teams offers the possibility to create a channel per student group, within which students can collaborate.
- The tool offers students a place to work together easily and intensively outside of lectures.
- Teams automatically creates a chat for each meeting, which will continue to exist after the meeting. In this chat you can share files or send messages even after the meeting.
What is this tool less suitable for?
- Microsoft Teams content is not made available for course reviews and review committees. For this reason, Teams is unsuitable for sharing course materials, communicating about primary educational processes, and receiving student assignment submissions. Canvas is the platform where all primary educational processes should take place. Teams can be an addition though; an environment where students can collaborate or lectures/meetings can take place.
- Do you want students to collaborate on a document once? Then it is not practical to create a Team. Ask students to collaborate using their own OneDrive or create a document from your OneDrive and share the link with students.
When does this tool work best?
- If you create a Team as part of your teaching, you are responsible for ensuring a safe online environment, in line with the Code of Conduct and Rules for the Responsible Use of ICT Facilities. You are therefore expected to monitor Team activities and intervene when necessary.
- If you’d rather not take on this responsibility, you can also make students aware of the options that make it easy for them to collaborate, video call and chat online themselves.