Using Microsoft Teams in a Classroom Context

Microsoft Teams is free chat-based collaboration app that allows you to easily share documents,
meet online, and interact with students.
Profile
Your profile in Teams allows you to set your name, as well as an availability option. You can set
this to say either available, busy, do not disturb, be right back, appear offline or appear away.
You can also set a duration; this could be beneficial to set to busy during class times, so you do
not get notifications during that time. You also have the option to set a status message that all
people who have access to your profile can see.
On the left bar of Teams, you have the following tabs, each one will be bolded with a breakdown
of what it is and how it can be used.
Activity
The activity tab will light up with a notification anytime something happens in one of the Teams
that you are a part of. That could be when someone reacts to or comments on a post you are a
part of, or when someone else posts in one of the Teams you are in. You also get notifications
whenever something is assigned such as an assignment or quiz, as well as when you are tagged
or one of the Teams you are in is tagged.
If you have many Teams that you are a part of, this is beneficial as each notification tells you
which Team it is from, and what it is about. You can click on the specific notification inside of
the activity tab, it will take you to the specific thread or Team that the notification is from. There
is also a dropdown from feed that allows you to see all of your activity which shows all
comments that you have made and which threads/Teams they were made in.
Chat
The chat function is a great way for you to keep in touch with students one on one, or in smaller
groups. Chat allows you to send both text messages and send files between members. There is a
nice files function at the top that allows you to scroll through all files sent within each chat. You
can use chat to have individualized video or voice calls, in which you can share you screen with
the individual. You can also schedule meetings within a certain chat if you are wanting to meet
one on one with students.
Teams
The Teams tab shows you all the Teams you are apart of. From here you can also create new
Teams or join ones that already exist. Teams could be used for each class that you have, but you
could also create a Team for groups and give them a space to collaborate that you have access to
as the teacher.
General Channel
Every Team you create starts with a “general” channel, with the option to create more moving
forward. The general channel comes with default tabs at the top, some of which are exclusive
specifically to the general channel. The exclusive tabs are “Class Notebook” which allows you to
create a notebook using OneNote or some other software in which all classroom notes could be
stored. There is also an option to let students edit the class notebook to allow for collaboration of
information. The assignments tab and grades tab go hand in hand; the assignments tab allows
you to create specific assignments for the Team and if it has a grade, shows those grades in the
gradebook tab.
You also have the option to add additional tabs that use other apps supported by Microsoft. One
of the most beneficial tabs I found and added was “Insights” which allows you to see
engagement with your Team. You can see how many students have been active on your Team,
how long they were on your Team, and what they did while in your Team. This is excellent for
checking which students have accessed notes outside of class, how long they were in Teams
working, as well as knowing how many students are actually engaging with the material you
provide, which is extremely hard while not in the classroom. It even has a tab for how many
assignments were handed in late or not, as well as the average grade of the assignments
submitted.
Specific Channels
You also have the option to create more channels, whether this be for different groups to post
ideas in, or in my case, I created a channel for each chapter/section I was teaching. An Intern that
I am working with created a channel for each group in his class, and then scheduled a meeting in
each channel so that students could meet in their groups and he could pop between.
Inside each channel you are supplied with a Posts and Files tab that are separate from that in the
General Channel. Inside of posts you can create either a general conversation or an
announcement. Both function similar with a reply option, the ability to add pictures, etc. but the
announcement sends a notification to the whole Team. You can also edit each post to allow
students to comment or not. I used this function to give weekly updates on the plan coming up,
as well as plans for individual days so students knew what was expected of them during that
day’s online lesson. If there is a post that you want a specific student, or the whole Team to get a
notification for you can use the @ sign and either the Team name or their name to send a
notification to the group.
The files section is great to use for organizing class material. Under each channel you are
supplied with a Files tab that allows you to create folders to organize all your material. Inside
each folder you can create or add documents such as pdfs, word documents, excel spreadsheet or
even surveys from SurveyMonkey. You are also able to upload videos if you record your
lessons, and even sync the certain files tab to cloud storage or Microsoft SharePoint.
You can also schedule meetings inside of Teams, which are scheduled in a specific channel. You
can post these in either general or one of the channels you have made. The meetings are
customizable to who is invited, who can share their screen, whether students can unmute or not.
These meetings are a great way to have a discussion with your students, since inside the meeting
you can access the chat which allows students to send questions/answer questions without all
trying to talk over each other. At the top there is also an option for students to “raise their hand”
which allows you to pause and have them ask out loud.
Inside the meetings you also have the option to turn on cameras to see each other rather than
talking to a blank screen. If you have multiple cams on you can order the camera views however
you want to see multiple students or only a few. You also have the option to invite people from
outside of your Team to specific meetings, without inviting them to the Team. This allows you to
be observed by an administrator or a peer.
Specific to each Team
Inside each team you can set member to either be owners or members/guests. Depending on what
you have the members set to gives them different permissions in the Team. For your general
class Team you can give students permission to make posts, upload files and edit the Team, or
make sure that they can’t. If you have groups make their own Teams this is great so they can add
you to their Team and they can order all their own material in a way that works for them. These
permission settings can also allow students to tag each other in posts.
Under settings you can also manage the theme of your Team, giving it tags such as
“mathematics” or “Social Studies” so you know what each Team you have is related to. Here
you can also find a Team Code which allows other individuals to join your Team without
needing an invite or requesting permission. Along side this is the ability to manage your
classroom notebook sections with who can view them.
Finally, there is an analytics section for each Team that will supply you with some useful
information. First off it lets you choose a specific channel from your Team, along side a timeline
you want to look at. You can then see what users are a part of that channel, what apps you have
installed in that channel and the size of all files you have uploaded into that channel. It also
shows you how many posts and replies there are in each channel, how many users in that channel
are active and how often they are active. It also gives you a graph showing the student
engagement with posts and replies.
Apps
One of the most beneficial apps that I installed onto my Teams is Insights. Insights allows you to
have a deep view into the different members of your Team and how they engage with your
Team. It shows you how many students are active, how often each of them are active, which
ones interact with your posts and when. You can look deeper into the engagement of each
student and see how long they were accessing your Team, what they accessed and when, and
even see when they uploaded assignments. Insights even gives you the ability to see all missing
submissions, how many there are, and when they were due.
I found this to be great if I wanted to know when students were engaging with my material,
especially if they had missed class or if they were engaging solely online. I could see that
students weren’t looking at assignments until late at night and then submitting them even later
without the ability to ask me questions. With teaching online, you can see which students are
using class time to learn content and which ones are not engaging at all.
Streams is a cool app that can also be used for video lessons in Teams. From what I’ve heard
from other teachers using Teams it doesn’t make students download the videos instead it streams
the video for the students. This is excellent for students who don’t have devices that have much
space to upload videos to.
Assignments
The assignments section is one of the most versatile on Teams. The tab gives you the ability to
see all assignments that you have across all Teams, as well as you can view a list of assignments
that apply to specific Teams. The basics you are given is a list of all your assignments, under
each you can see when they are due, how many students have turned them in, and how many you
have returned with a mark/comments.
When creating an assignment, you are given two prompts: assignment or quiz. When creating an
assignment, you get to title it, and add a description. Then inside the assignment you upload any
resources related to the assignment such as the assignment itself or any rubrics or other important
documents. Inside here you can choose to assign the assignment now or later, as well as can
determine whether or not late hand ins are allowed. Finally, you can determine if it’s for marks
and if so how many it is worth, and you can see the grades/average supplied under analytics.
If you choose to create a quiz you are prompted to add a Microsoft Forms. These are excellent
for quick student assessment and self assessments as you can have them give students immediate
feedback whether their answer is correct or not. These could be used more so in other classes
where you want to check knowledge of terms or simple memorization facts, as well as
assessment that aren’t for marks to allow students to be able to see if they are right or not
immediately.
Calendar
Finally, you are supplied with a tab for a calendar. This calendar is filled with events from all of
the Teams you are in. this is great for you if you schedule a bunch of meetings with different
students you can see when they are and who they are with. This can also be great for students to
see when they have meetings for their classes and to keep track of when things are due.
What I used
Teams was a new tool from what I was used to, but it was user friendly and felt familiar. Teams
feels like a combination of Zoom mixed with Moodle with pros and cons when comparing it to
both. Teams is great in that it allows you to host meeting and video calls in the same space that
you are storing files for students. This can also be a positive as students do not need to keep track
of as many apps if they needed to use both Zoom and Moodle.
My main purpose for using Teams when I started off at Chinook was a way for students to access
notes outside of the classroom. I created different channels for each of my units, and had the
notes stored within each of those units. I found this to be intuitive for students to find notes and
be able to download them through the app. Since students only saw me twice a week if they
missed one day, they would miss a large amount of material. Being able to access the material in
a timely matter helped them to not fall behind. Inside of the files section for each chapter, I also
included any extra practice for that section and any handouts that were provided in class. In case
students were not able to access certain types of files, I uploaded all notes as both Word
documents and pdfs.
Each Team for my classes had a separate channel for each unit. Under each channel I would try
and post any important reminders for upcoming dates, as well as upcoming plans for the unit.
This was a great way for me to give students important information outside of class, and if they
missed class, they knew where to find it. By having posted plans for each unit, students did not
need to worry about when their next test would be, or any other important dates, as they knew
where they could find them on Teams. I also tagged each class in the posts, so they would get a
notification telling them some new information was posted.
As the semester continued students started using Teams to connect with me outside of the
classroom. I was able to use the chat feature to answer students’ questions between the days they
saw me. Students did not have to wait two days for clarifications, but instead could get
immediate feedback when needed. If students needed more clarification, I was able to set up a
meeting with them and join it on both my computer and the iPad. Using the iPad allowed me to
walk through examples using a surface I could write on, while still being able to talk through my
computer. Something I did not end up doing, but one of my colleges did was save images of
students work, wrote on them using the iPad to show mistakes, and then sent them back. This
would be another great way to supply feedback using Teams.
Due to the context of the semester, and the current pandemic, the math department chose to not
take in physical formative assessments. I combated this by using the assignments section on
Teams to post two questions at the end of every class and gave students time to work on them.
These two questions would cover the basic material from the day and allowed me to see where
my students were at in terms of understand content. One of the points I made when explaining
this process to students was it is a way for them to receive feedback from me on the days they
wouldn’t see me. I liked this method of collecting formative assessment, and would use it in the
future, but I think I would need to find a way for students to buy into it more.
I had only uploaded pdfs for these assignment files, but another option that I could have used
would be Microsoft forms. If I wanted students to be able to get immediate feedback for
themselves, forms would have been a great option as when they input their answers it will
immediately tell them if they were right. The reason I decided against this was I was more
interested in the process the students were going through on the questions I assigned. Having to
go through each of their questions and give them feedback personally was less timely for both
them and myself, but I found it more beneficial where I could see where students were making
specific mistakes and I was able to help them correct those mistakes.
One thing that was mentioned to me that is mainly beneficial to online teaching, was creating
different Teams or channels for groups. One of my fellow intern teachers created multiple
channels in Teams for different groups in his class. This gave them an online space to
collaborate, in a way my peer could still monitor them. He even scheduled meetings in each
channel separately so that they could have meetings in their small groups, and he could jump
between each one to check in and ask questions. I love the idea of using separate Teams or
channels for students to be able to interact and share files/create posts while still being able to
access everything as the teacher.