By now you have probably had the chance to run some online face-to-face sessions with students in Blackboard Collaborate, and you will know how valuable this synchronous teaching can be. But what if Collaborate becomes unavailable at the last minute?
Don’t worry, you can very quickly set up a similar online environment in Teams. Students don’t need to be in a Team for you to do this; you can set up the session as a meeting from your Outlook calendar.
Setting up a meeting in the Outlook Calendar desktop app
Select ‘New Teams Meeting’.
Add a title that will be meaningful to your students, and set the times. You can either use your module distribution list to add attendees, or leave this blank and post the link on Blackboard.
You will see that the text box at the bottom has been automatically populated with some text, including the link to the meeting.
Right click on the link and select ‘Copy link address’ You can then add this link into your Blackboard site.
Setting up a meeting in Outlook online
Click on ‘New Event’ in the top left.
Add a title that will be meaningful to your students, and set the times. You can either use your module distribution list to add attendees, or leave this blank and post the link on Blackboard.
Importantly, you must select ‘Teams meeting’ in the ‘Add online meeting’ dropdown under ‘Search for a room or location’ .
Now save the meeting with the button at the top left. The meeting options will close and an ‘Event created’ message will pop up.
To get the link for the meeting to post on Blackboard:
Click on the meeting in your calendar and click Edit to go back into the meeting options.
Go to ‘More options’.
You will see that the text box at the bottom has been automatically populated with some text, including the link to the meeting.
Right click on the link and select ‘Copy link address’ You can then add this link into your Blackboard site.
In the meeting
Students can chat, raise their hand, share video and audio and share their screen by default. To alter these settings, go to the three dots in your toolbar for more options, and select ‘Meeting options’.
You can use Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams meetings. Go to your Sharing Options in your toolbar and look for the whiteboard on the right. Unlike Collaborate, the whiteboard saves automatically and is available after the meeting.
There is currently no breakout group feature in Teams, but we are expecting one soon.
Recordings
Recordings in Teams are not currently available to students, but you can make a recording, download it and upload it to Panopto if you need to make the recording available. You can record by going to the three dots in the toolbar and selecting ‘Start recording’ (make sure you have read the article ‘Changes to recording meetings in Microsoft Teams’ on the Intranet).