Software Development | MS Teams – Instructor Information

Using Microsoft Teams in Your Course

Purpose

This Document will help you setup your Microsoft Teams team for your class. We encourage you to communicate as much as possible using Microsoft Teams. The goal is that students have place to ask and answer questions in real-time that is much more authentic than Canvas discussion boards. We also hope it helps introduce them to the kinds of tools professionals use. In addition, as part of the Office 365 suite, Microsoft Teams is fully supported by the University and its IT staff.

Students will use Microsoft Teams consistently through the program, and are introduced to it early in the program, so hopefully as they move through the courses they will become more familiar with it. However, especially in the beginning classes, you may need to encourage good practices.

If you are new to Microsoft Teams, yourself, you can read the student-facing Teams introduction for basic information and setup.

As explained in the student-facing instructions, while Microsoft Teams can be used in a browser, it is highly recommended to download and use the desktop app, and possibly the mobile app as well if you would like.

Create the Team

Canvas has a Microsoft Education integration, however you will need to enable it for your class. This integration will create a Microsoft Teams Teams for your section and add you as the admin. The integration will also automatically synchronize the students in your Canvas class with members of the Team. This is very handy as it continues to sync the user list as students add and drop the course.

Enable the integration

The follow steps are used to enable the integration:

1. Login to Canvas and go to your class settings.

   

2. Click on the navigation tab.

   

3. Enable the Microsoft Education Navigation link.
   1. Scroll down the list of available navigation items until you find the Microsoft Education item.
   2. Click the kebob menu and select + Enable option (you can also drag and drop it if you would rather).
   3. The screen will refresh with the Microsoft Education link shown in the enabled list, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the Save button.

   

4. Configure your team and features.

   You should now see the Microsoft Education navigation link in your course.

   

   1. When you click on the Microsoft Education link you will see a Microsoft sign in page. You will need to sign in to your pathway account to finish the configuration.

      

   2. You should see a welcome page. Click the Continue Setup button.

      

   3. This new integration provides much more than just MS Teams support, our team will explore the new features and see how they might be used to improve our courses but for now you will enable Teams and OneDrive. Enable the following features:
      • OneDrive
      • Teams Meetings
      • Teams
      • Add Microsoft Teams

      

      When your settings match the image above, click the Done button.
5. After a short while a new team will be created for your course. It takes a few more minutes for the course's OneDrive to be provisioned. OneDrive is necessary so you can add attachments to your Teams posts and files to your course. Once configured, the Microsoft Education link will provide direct access to the provisioned features from within canvas.

   

6. If you need to modify your course settings, click your profile icon then select Course Settings.

   

7. The name of the new team will be the same as your course name. It will look something like this CSE111.002 – Programming with Functions. If you would like, you can rename it to add a semester in parenthesis to help distinguish it such as: "CSE111.002 – Programming with Functions (Blk 1 2024)" or whatever you like.

   1. Click the three dots next to the Team name - Select Manage Team.
   2. Go to Settings in the top menu.
   3. Click the Edit button and rename the team.

   

8. The only channel that will exist is General. The General channels is a good place to message all members of the class. . Create additional channels as needed by your course.

   

   Check the Teaching Notes to see if specific channels are needed for your course.

   Here are a few ideas for channels you may wish to create:

   1. Announcements: Messages from your instructor.
   2. Introductions: Class introductions.
   3. Random: Anything you want to talk about.

Group Channels

If your course has team/group work you will need to make Channels for each group. It is best to use the group names in Canvas as the names for the Teams channels. You can create Standard or Private channels. Private channels can only be accessed by the Team users you add to the channel. Standard channels can be used by anyone in the Team. Private Channels are a bit more work since you will have to maintain group membership of the channels. Make sure you add yourself to the channel as well. The benefit of private channels is less noise in the team and private file storage for each group. The channel type cannot be changed after it is created.

Each student should join a group in Canvas so the instructor can track group membership and adjust private channels as necessary.

If a team becomes too crowded (more that 6 or 7 in a team) the teacher can create another Canvas group and MS team for the same date/time and move half the students to the new team.

Another great advantage of having the team named by the day/time of the meeting is that a student can easily attend another team meeting if something unplanned comes up and they can't attend their normal meeting.

Weekly Meetings

Microsoft Teams has a "Meet" button in the upper right corner of the screen.

If a team member clicks on this icon a meeting starts. Then any other person who wants to join this meeting will see that a meeting is in session by looking at the channels list on the main Microsoft Teams screen. Then they can join the meeting in progress. This way all team members know when the meeting is scheduled (by virtue of the team name) and the first person to arrive starts the meeting and all other team members can join the meeting in progress. It is also possible to record the meeting – team members can decide if they want to record or not.

The Team Channel history also tracks who attended the meeting. In the screenshot above you can see the initials of the people who attended next to the meeting notes, and also see how long the meeting lasted.

There is one more advantage to using the Microsoft teams Meet button – you as the instructor can see in real-time if a meeting is being held at the scheduled day/time and you can “drop in” to any meeting in progress to say “hi” or to help students or answer questions. The students seem to really appreciate this surprise visit because it shows the teacher is interested in them individually.

Announce Microsoft Teams in the Course.

Once the Microsoft Teams team has been created, you need to tell the students about it and give them instructions for how to sign up. The most important things to tell them are that:

• Login to teams with their Pathway email.
• Participation in the Microsoft Teams discussions is not optional and will be the primary communication method used in the course.
• How to download Microsoft Teams for their computer or mobile device.
• How to employ proper Teams etiquette.
• Link to student instructions. Introduction to Microsoft Teams

In addition, to ensure that students are aware that the course discussion is occurring in Microsoft Teams, for each of the first three weeks, after posting a weekly introduction to Microsoft Teams, please post an announcement in Canvas reminding the students to go look at Microsoft Teams for this introduction as well as other discussions.

Using Microsoft Teams vs. Announcements and E-Mail

While Microsoft Teams will be the primary vehicle for course discussion and coordination, Canvas announcements and email have important roles as well.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams should be used for Q&A about the course and it's topics. This is ideal for discussion about the weekly topics and assignments. In addition, students should be encouraged to use Microsoft Teams for all of their team discussions and as the primary way to contact the instructor.

You can respond to a specific student by prefixing their Microsoft Teams user name with the @ symbol. This will send a notification to whatever device they've used to sign up for Microsoft Teams. It is customary to reply to direct questions from students in this fashion. In addition, you can send a notification to the entire class by posting in the General channel and addressing the message to @general.

Finally, anytime you post to a private channel, every member of that channel is notified by default.

Announcements

Canvas Announcements should be used for any official course business or announcements, such as changing the due dates or the scope of assignments. You should consider Microsoft Teams as the medium for discussion, but Announcements the avenue for core, official business.

E-mail

E-mail should be used for any sensitive or personal communication with an individual student. For example, a discussion about plagiarism or directly trying to contact a student that has not been responsive to their teammates, or is missing assignments. Email is the official medium of communication recognized by the university for university business.

Troubleshooting

Team is not created

MS Sync note enabled

Solution: Enable Microsoft sync for course as described in this document

Instructor email not verified

Solution: Verify email in canvas. Go to your profile page, and then click settings. If your email address in the top right corner has an "!" next to it, you need to verify it.

Student not in team, or disappears from team

Email not setup correctly

Solution: For the Teams integration to work properly it is necessary for to use pathway email in canvas: Each user must have their @byupathway.edu email listed as their primary email AND it must be verified. If you are a new teacher, your email is likely not verified yet. Go to your profile page, and then click settings. If your email address in the top right corner has an "!" next to it, you need to verify it.