Microsoft Teams meetings for the classroom – what to use now, and what is coming soon

[Mike Tholfsen]

Over the last few weeks, schools have been working tirelessly to enable distance learning for their students and faculty. We’ve heard directly from many of you about engaging students in lessons, encouraging student to student collaboration, and facilitating staff professional development all while remote and we are inspired. We also know these last few weeks have not been easy as uncertainty continues to grow worldwide and the need for our tools to be safe and reliable has never been greater. In all of this, we want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on how we can improve Microsoft Teams for distance learning, especially at such a critical time.

While we work on these improvements, we encourage you to explore the many ways you can use Teams today for online classes and meetings. We have created several resources to support you and your class during remote learning.

In this blog we have outlined how students, educators, and IT can maximize Teams for distance learning.

1. Getting started
2. Resources for educators
3. Learning Management System (LMS) integrations
4. Guidance for IT admins
5. What’s coming soon

Getting Started with Teams meetings

• Creating, attending, and running meetings while using Teams for distance learning
• Teams for Education Quick Start Guide (PDF)  that includes meetings and calls
• Microsoft Teams meetings training

Resources for educators

A how-to video or short webinar are convenient ways to learn directly from trusted experts. Below are a few that we recommend to help you quickly ramp up on Teams meetings.

Quick tips videos: Alice Keeler's Teams meeting "micro-PD"

EdTech expert Alice Keeler has developed a helpful set of “micro-PD" YouTube videos in a Playlist so you can quickly ramp up on Teams meetings. Each video is :30 to :45 seconds long and designed for you to master tips for teaching in Teams in under a minute. See for yourself in the video below!

You can access Alice’s entire Teams meetings micro-PD playlist and for more training, here is her entire Microsoft Teams for Education micro-PD playlist. Bookmark both so you can reference at any time.

Webinar - Online lectures and classes with all your students

Dominic Williamson from our product team goes over how to use Teams meetings for distance learning for both K-12 and Higher Education students in this webinar.

Webinar - Using Teams Meetings in the classroom and what's coming soon
Gordon Chang from our product group demonstrates Teams meetings and discusses the future roadmap in this webinar (you can also review the PowerPoint slides).

LMS Integrations

We recently announced that Teams meetings can now easily be integrated with the world’s leading Learning Management Systems (LMS).  Learn how you can create a Teams meeting right from within Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology and other LMSs.

Are you an LMS developer who wants to enable Teams meeting creation from within your LMS? We’ve got you covered. Learn how to install the Teams app inside of your LMS here.

IT admin guidance

We want you to be aware of and familiar with the different policy settings for Teams as you deploy. Here are two essential articles that all IT Admins should reference to get the most out of Teams meetings.

• IT Admin guidance for setting up meetings
• Manage meetings policies in Teams

What's coming soon

We have been listening closely to educators and have already integrated your feedback into our product plans. Here are the features we are currently recently announced, and we have many more being active worked on in UserVoice for Teams and education that you can get the latest status on.  Just look for the "Working on it" status in UserVoice items

Enhancing meetings for Instruction

End meeting for all participants – Rolled out Custom video background - Rolling out Attendance reports for meetings - coming in April Raise hand - coming in late April 3x3 video support – rollout begins in late April Only Educators can start the meeting. Students can't join meeting before the educator – coming in April

IT Administrator settings

Setting for the default role of meeting attendee - a policy setting to allow the default for meetings to be Educator is “organizer” and students are “attendees”. This means the educator doesn’t have to set this through “Meeting Options” every time - coming in early May Meetings Chat policy - with this change, the new policy will allow students to chat ONLY in the meeting and not before or after  – coming in early May

As we work to improve the Teams meetings experience for instruction, our top commitment is reliable service delivery to each school and university using Teams. We are also prioritizing features that ensure student safety by making it easier for educators to manage their online classes in Teams meetings.

Thank you again for making time to share your remote learning experiences with us! It is through your feedback that we can build a more useful education tool. Please continue to share your feedback and ideas through UserVoice and feel free to track all of these features on the public roadmap. We’ll continue to share updates on what we’re working on and what you can expect in the weeks to come.

Mike Tholfsen
Microsoft Education Product Manager

@mtholfsen

[Robert K]

Cool news. We in Europe see the high demand and urgent need for these features even from large companies. When will the features also be available outside the USA (at least as a public preview)? Will they then also be available in a language other than English? 

[GBeaudoin]

Good news, especially the raised hand for questions. I was hoping to see more options to manage the microphone muting of students by the teachers but I'm still hopeful. Teachers also need more "moderators" functiosn inside their teams such as deleting, moving or editing threads or comments from students.

If you could also get some trackion going for some the of the most requested uservoice request that would be nice. That comment show a few uservoice request that are over three year olds and not receiving a lot of attention. Many of them are relevent in a education setting but seem to be ignored. I would add some kind of Hard Mute function to that list as well. 

[tsantangelo]

Ability to share screen would be nice. Toggling between applications while presenting involves a lot of steps.

[SueF11111]

I want to be able to see chat, hands up and  participants when sharing the desktop. I currently use my desktop to show word documents, pdfs etc but once in the desktop I can no longer see the chat and or participants. This means I become blind and do not know if the students have a question or have left or joined the meeting.

[Silvajon]

With school starting in just a month virtually, I would hope that a lot of these features are finished soon! Specifically only letting 'moderators/teachers' be able to start meetings. There were many issues last school year because that feature was not implemented.

[rwd-slo]

Any news on the meeting policy change so that students can only chat in a meeting and not privately, as it is way past May as indicated above.

Cannot any info on this in the public roadmap or uservoice.

Thanks

[jabunge]

I run a corporate training business and we have been delivering distance learning events since after the 9/11 attacks.  The tool we use today is called SABA Meeting (formerly Centra) and it works for us well because it has back-office administration capabilities that allow us to import pre-built slides that will be presented in the class and we can also save this event into a library to be reused over and over.  The saved events all have unique URLs that are created when we schedule it to be used and it’s not the presenter’s responsibility to create the conference URL.  We integrate the URL for a session/event into our internal LMS system to work with a “Connect” button.  Our company recently implemented MS Teams and it would be great if Teams could replace this older tool as our standard tool globally.  Recently, I’ve seen the Raise Hands and feedback tools added, which is great, but there are features needed to allow us to transition to Teams.  Can meeting URLs be created by an administrator and tied to an event?  Can presentation slides be pre-loaded to an event and then the event be reused again and again?  Can surveys be built into an event as well and saved for a future presenter to leverage in class?  Our business is based upon classes that are repetitively offered throughout the global by different instructors.  Having a saved event with pre-loaded slides or survey questions would help ensure a level of consistency in delivering the topic.  Any suggestions or feedback on whether this is already available or is it in development?