eLearning

Microsoft Teams for Teaching and Learning Deployment

Duration: 
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 (ITS) guide.

From Semester 2 2024 ITS will be expanding student access to the Microsoft 365 suite including Teams, cloud storage via OneDrive, OneNote and Forms.

What is happening with Teams for Teaching and Learning?

Teams will be made available for all courses for Semester 2, 2024. A link will be incorporated into the Learn.UQ course template. Course Coordinators will decide whether their courses should utilise Teams and will then activate the corresponding Team and make the link available to students. Students enrolled in the respective courses will automatically be added to the corresponding Teams.

What are the use cases for Teams for Teaching and Learning?

ITaLI will provide support on how to leverage Teams (including using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, To Do and Planner within Teams) to enhance teaching through collaborative practices, including: 

  1. Course-level collaboration and discussions, as an alternative to traditional platforms like discussion boards. 

  1. Facilitation of tutorial groups within Teams. 

  1. Setting up private channels for group assignments and projects, providing students with an online space to collaborate and communicate.

  2. Facilitation of active learning activities using shared documents and tools set up in Teams (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Forms, To Do, Planner).

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. 

What support will be available for Teams for Teaching and Learning?

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

Staff Communications

Planned

  • faciliated a range of workshops for key staff

  • met with faculty Associate Deans (academic) to brief them on the project and identify Summer Semester, 2023 and Semester 1, 2024 Proof of Concept courses

  • 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 through Microsoft Team

  • 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

FAQs

Do I need to use Teams in my teaching?

No, using Microsoft 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 Teams space and 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 tutorial or workshop. 

  • Your students can work in 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. 

Will Teams replace Zoom in 2024?

Zoom will be available to facilitate teaching and learning for the foreseeable future. 

Will Teams replace Lecture Recordings (Echo360)?

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

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 the Team app be available in lecture theatres?

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

Can student use OneDrive?

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