4 What Can I do in Microsoft Teams?

Live facilitation – Microsoft Teams has a robust live facilitation tool that allows you to have synchronous classes. It also allows students to create synchronous meetings of their own at their own discretion. Teams has a whiteboard, video and audio, personalized backgrounds and recording functions (to name a few). We have multiple chapters devoted to live facilitation in this book, please check it out (e.g. Using Whiteboard).

Breakout spaces – Microsoft Teams allows you to have group spaces (in Teams called ‘channels’) where students have their own text chat, file storage and meeting space.

Seamless communication – There are a variety of approaches to communication in the system. You can make announcements that send notifications to everyone, direct messages a group of students or direct message an individual.

Organize files effectively – With Microsoft Teams you are staying inside the Microsoft world. That means that you can store files directly in your course the same way you would store your personal files. There’s no need to ‘upload’ files to the system. It is the system. A note of caution, the file system within Teams can be slow and difficult at times so ensure that you familiarize yourself with it before classes begin.

Connect other software – This is more complicated, but it is possible to include outside software programs into Microsoft Teams. You could, for instance, include Microsoft Planner (project management) directly into your course.