Forum Discussion
Using Teams for education as a private tutor
Melanie2375 Hi Melanie, there is a UserVoice page that you might want to vote for (to make it more likely that the development gets done and also just to get email updates on it): https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/34820398-merge-teams-for-education-teams-for-business
I think this is really important for a few use cases:
- private tutors, like yourself
- professional training
- learning and development within businesses
Having some of the additional features, like assignments and class OneNotes would be really useful in all these situations I think. Is there any other things from Edu version that you are wanting to use in your private tutoring?
Thanks so much Gavin_Jones I've just been told by a sales chat person that MS Business 365 Basic will give me access to the same functionality as I get in my school's Teams (education version). Is this nonsense?
Melanie2375 Hello again Melanie, I'm afraid you didn't get a correct answer from the sales person. It doesn't matter if you buy a Business (or Enterprise) subscription as it's not a Teams for Education subscription. You would certainly get the full desktop Teams client, but still only be able to access what your looking for with the eligible Teams for Education account. Think of Teams as an interface that is controlled in the back-end depending on what subscription is assigned to your account, easily explained.
Melanie2375 I mean, being nice, I guess it depends on what they mean by the same functionality. Certainly, seeing the Teams in a grid view, class OneNote and assignments are all not available in the business version of Teams, as far as I know... unless there is a way to switch the functionality over in admin centre that I am not aware of (but I have looked).
You could still use Teams free or business version for private tutoring and work around these and it might not be a deal breaker. i.e. you could use Teams free version and still set up a team for each client, still use a separate OneNote for each Team and use Planner instead for monitoring status of assignments?
One thing they might not have mentioned (as it is grey area and spread across different departments in MS) is that if you use Teams free, you can invite as many 'external' people you want e.g. students/clients but will lose the ability to use calendar and scheduling Teams meetings in advance. If you pay for Business Basic, you get the calendar back (and all the M365 apps which is good value) but then can only invite 5 guests (students) with your licence and will need to buy additional licence for every 5 more guests on a 5:1 ratio...although it is not clear if you are literally restricted from adding them or if it is just frowned upon (or illegal) if you do.
