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I work in a University. We use Blackboard as our VLE. Teams was deployed 6 months after the start of the pandemic so teaching staff used Zoom to deliver online teaching and have kept with it because they are human and "we don't like to change". Teams is being adopted at a good pace over the whole University by staff and more slowly by students. However, because Zoom is still being paid for by the University, and because students are using Google Mail and won't be migrated to Outlook & Exchange until mid 2022, and because some Blackboard hardliners see MS Teams as a threat, the benefits of using MS Teams for teaching delivery is being over-looked, in fact it's even true to say that it is being discouraged to advocate and talk about.
What tangible advice do you have to help drive the adoption of MS Teams for teaching in the scenario I've described?
- Hi Mary, I teach at a college and we had other resources setup for virtual training. The department that I work with started a discussion with IT support team about testing it internally first. We invited ourselves with separate guest accounts to try out the full experience for faculty, students and guests. Once we got it configured, we were able to get it approved for use.
- Rather than fighting against Blackboard, why not look at the integration of Blackboard to play along side Teams. Teams and Blackboard play nicely together. More information can be found on the Blackboard website - https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Integrations/Microsoft_Teams
- Hi Mary, We work with higher edu folks like yours, and blackboard integrates just great into Teams and visa versa, however I have to echo Stephen on the single platform that does everything, and not "just" video calls and meetings. BB does have it's own "Teams like" product, but it's not integrated into O365 or M365 in terms of identity and security like Teams is. I could go on, but I don't want to lecture you 🙂
Hi Mary. It's certainly a complex challenge when people have loyalties to different existing platforms. I agree with @Dewayne that the best approach is working with a few people that are willing to talk about their needs, getting practical and trying some things with them.
It's good to hear students are moving from Gmail to Outlook in 2022. That will open up the possibilities.
Here's a great case study from Dr David Kellerman at the NSW University in Australia. He made his life easier facilitating his classes in Teams, leveraging Q&A and Find the Expert. The engagement levels from his students greatly improved.
Hi Mary, I can totally relate to your situation because our university is/was in a similar situation. We're a Zoom university but Teams has had some significant and organic growth. Our success has been completely around meeting our users where they are and showing them the utility of Teams. It's grown in popularity purely based on the fact that people understand it's useful and it will make their life easier. Changing people is certainly the hardest part and if you can address the "What's in it for me?" situation then we've found people will be drawn to it. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you'd like to talk more. We've welcomed several guests from other universities into our learning community team. We love teaching Teams!
https://www.avepoint.com/blog/shifthappens/microsoft-teams-adoption-university-of-florida/