Teaching with Microsoft Teams

I am very grateful for the community of like-minded learning technologists that has developed during the pandemic. One of the few positive parts of this experience has been the sense of support that I have had from external colleges and providers and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with others as part of working groups, projects and research studies in 2021.

Ultimately it is clear that the FE sector has pivoted during this pandemic to teaching online incredibly well but there is still a need to establish 'what does a good online lesson look like' and 'how do you ensure academic integrity when assessing online'. Jisc, AoC and ETF have made great strides in these areas but colleges do need additional support to achieve their goals during this difficult time.

So, how to teach online with Teams? Well first of all, there is no one answer. That may sound like an unusual statement but it's true! Since launching Teams as our VLE in June I have found that one Programme Manager may use the student notebooks to substitute physical workbooks or portfolios for their practical course and others may focus mainly on formal assignments. In addition, we use the content library and the files tab for lesson resources with the aim to move this over to SharePoint when ready but the breakdown of these sections are purely down to personal preference, some tutors chose to use units or modules and others use a weekly chronological order.

I'm sure that other learning technologists would agree that variety is key, there is no one perfect system when it comes to teaching online and as the teacher is facilitating the online lesson they need to be confident with their delivery in order for students to engage. All of our tutors use the Microsoft Teams class notebook for resources, the assignments tab for formative assessments, the posts tab for discussion forums, breakout rooms for live lessons, Microsoft Stream for lesson recordings and third party apps such as Nearpod, Turnitin, Quizlet and more for additional tools!

Please keep an eye out for another blog post where I cover teaching online in more detail.