eLearning

Microsoft Teams for Teaching and Learning Deployment

May 2024–December 2025

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams (Teams) is an online collaboration platform. It enables group members to co-author documents, have both individual and group chats, schedule meetings, as well as use audio or video communication features. Teams is currently available to UQ staff for organisational unit, project-based work, and professional group collaborations. For more information, please refer to the Microsoft Teams for staff (ITS) page and the Collaboration Tools - Microsoft Teams (ITS) guide.

From Semester 2 2024 (Week 0 - 8 July) students will have expanded access to the Microsoft 365 suite including Teams, cloud storage via OneDrive, OneNote and Forms.

Notes:

  • Microsoft Teams (Teams) – refers to the Microsoft product 'Microsoft Teams', which is a part of Microsoft 365 suite.
  • Team – refers to a collaborative space setup within Microsoft Teams, to facilitate collaboration between groups such as project teams, work teams, sections, or an organisational unit.

Teams for Teaching and Learning

While all Semester 2 courses will be provided with a Team, the use of Teams for Teaching and Learning is optional. If Course Coordinators decide to utilise Teams, they will need to activate the corresponding Team and make the link available to students. Students enrolled in the respective course will automatically be added to the corresponding Team, called 'course team'. Please note that once a course team is activated, it cannot be reverted.

Use Cases of Teams for Teaching and Learning

ITaLI will provide support on how to leverage Teams to enhance teaching through collaborative practices, including: 

  1. Course-Level Discussion and Q&A: As an alternative to traditional platforms like discussion boards, Teams facilitates course-level discussions and Q&A sessions.
  1. Active Learning Activities and Collaboration: Teams enables the setup of shared documents and tools (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Forms, To Do, and Planner) for active learning activities and collaborative work.
  1. Tutorial Groups: Within Teams, tutorial groups can be effectively organised and managed.
  1. Private Channels for Group Assignments: Teams provides private channels, offering students an online space to collaborate and communicate specifically for group assignments and projects.

The introduction of Teams presents an opportunity to enhance functionality and address existing gaps in UQ’s eLearning environment. 

Support for additional use cases will be determined in consultation with faculties, members of the Learning Design Community, eLearning Operational Forum and the Digital Learning Sub-committee.  

Early adopter programs to gather feedback on Teams for additional use cases will be delivered in 2025. 

eLearning Support

The eLearning System and Support team provides assistance for using MS Teams in teaching and learning contexts. For instance, we support relevant apps within Teams, such as MS Forms for collecting student data and desktop apps for collaboration. Uses of these apps outside the teaching and learning context fall beyond our support scope.

Resources

Workshops on utilising Teams for teaching and learning are scheduled for June - July 2024.  Instructional guides for staff and students will be updated for Semester 2, 2024.  

Staff:

Student:

Workshops:

The eLearning Systems and Support Team will deliver 2-hour workshops to the following groups:  

To book a school-based workshop for your teaching staff email elearningadvisers@uq.edu.au.

Staff Communication

The eLearning Systems and Support Team will communicate with staff across all levels at UQ through a variety of channels, including:

  • communicate with faculty Associate Deans (Academic) on the MS Teams project 
  • briefings and consultations with key support stakeholders across UQ
  • regular presentations to the Learning Design and eLearning Update forum:
  • regular updates to the Learning Design and eLearning community Teams through Ask an eLearning Adviser channel.
  • regular Teaching and eLearning News articles:
  • monthly project progress reports to DLSC and DLPSC.
  • presentations on the project to faculty Teaching and Learning committees.
  • presentations on the project to school Teaching and Learning committees.

If you have any immediate concerns, please contact elearningadvisers@uq.edu.au.

FAQs

Do I need to use Teams in my teaching?

No, using Teams is completely optional. The decision to use Teams is at the discretion of the Course Coordinators. If a Course Coordinator chooses to use Teams, they will activate the necessary Team space to provide access via a link on Learn.UQ for students.  

We will continue to assess the effectiveness of Teams to enhance teaching and learning experiences throughout 2024 - 2025. This evaluation will help us understand how Teams can best be integrated into our educational practices. 

If I activate Teams for my course, what functionality does it enable?

Activating Teams opens up a variety of collaborative and interactive features, based on experiences from pilot courses between 2021 and 2024: 

  • You can set up channels for different activities such as discussions, Q&A sessions, and tutoriasl or workshops. 

  • Your students can work together in real time to discuss and collaborate on documents. 

  • You can set up private channels for students to collaborate in small groups using the chat, share documents and video conferencing functionalities. 

  • Using the "Class" template in Teams provides instructors with analytics on individual student activities within the team. These insights can be used to assess aspects of student engagement and teamwork, such as communication, planning, and meeting facilitation, in addition to evaluating the final outputs of their projects. 

Who should activate a course team?

All teaching staff with instructor role in a Learn.UQ course will be added to the corresponding course team as the team owners. Only the Course Coordinator should decide whether their course will use Teams for teaching and learning, and when to activate the course team.

What if I have a merged course?

The merged courses will have 3 team sites with corresponding course codes: 2 for each child course and 1 for the parent course. Please make sure you only activate the parent course team. 

Will Teams replace Zoom in 2024?

Zoom will be available to facilitate teaching and learning for the foreseeable future. The recommended conferencing tool for online teaching is Zoom.

Can I use Teams for online teaching?

Yes. The decision to use Teams or Zoom for online teaching is yours. This guide provides instructions on how to use Teams for hybrid teaching.

How can I use Teams to facilitate hybrid classes?

ITaLI will be evaluating if and how Teams can be used to facilitate hybrid classes 2024 -2025.

Will Teams replace Lecture Recordings (Echo360)?

No, lecture recordings in equipped teaching spaces will continue to be recorded via Echo360 based on the timetable.

Will Teams replace Blackboard?

No. Blackboard will remain as the Learning Management System at UQ. Teams if activated in a course will be the communication and collaboration platform for the course.

Will the Teams app be available in lecture theatres?

Yes, Teams is currently available on all teaching spaces computers.

Can students use OneDrive?

From Semester 2 2024 students will have access to OneDrive to share and collaborate on documents with staff and other students.

What happens if students have multiple Microsoft 365 accounts?

Students should add these accounts to their Microsoft 365 profile, which will enable them to select the required account to work within different professional Teams.

Will students who drop the course be recorded on their course team?

Yes. They will be automatically removed from the course team when their enrolment is updated in their Learn.UQ course. The update is twice daily.

Should I use Ed Discussion or Teams in my course?

Teams for tutorial and project collaboration - Facebook group replacement. Ed Discussion is best for Q&A and when students answer technical questions that involve a programming language or latex. Ed Discussion has the anonymity functionality while Teams does not have it.

What can I do to prevent students from sending messages to me via Teams?

One way is to set up a status message directing them to the communication channels specified in the course. Please check the page on How to manage your digital presence for detailed recommendations.