This tip describes a possible use of a team space in Teams, designed to help students become familiar with a topic before class. Links to tips on the use of specific tools are scattered throughout the page.
Let’s say a course covers four themes. After each theme has been reviewed and discussed in Teams in advance (2 weeks), the class meets for a face-to-face session. No contact teaching time is spent giving an introduction to the topic: students come to class after working on the materials in Teams, so in-class time is dedicated to questions and discussion.
How was it done?
The teacher requests a collaborative class space called Education via the TUNI Groups website. After the space is ready, the teacher adds 20 students to the team.
Structure of Teams
The Education team includes the General channel that includes the following tabs:
- Conversations: space for the teacher to share information and provide answers.
- Files: general course instructions.
- Class Notebook: teaching materials, notes taken in Teams, student notebooks for their own notes, etc.
- Assignments: submission of the end-of-course assignment
In addition, the teacher uses Forms to prepare a feedback survey and adds it as tab in the Teams channel.
The teacher creates four more Teams channels named after specific weeks and themes. The following tabs are automatically included in the channels:
- Conversations: discussion of each theme as instructed by the teacher
- Files: material connected to the theme (articles etc.)
- Notes: students’ notes and questions.
In addition, a self-study quiz (Forms) and video materials (Stream) are added as tabs.
What should I take into account?
- You can manage the team permissions in Teams, but users with different roles are able to pretty much perform the same activities.
- Only the team type Education comes with the Class Notebook and the Assignment tool.
- The teacher can highlight the first message by posting it to the Conversations tab and sending the team members a notification. This way it will stand out from the rest of the messages.
Read more:
Did you know you can also use Teams to support independent study and group working during large classes?
If you do not want to use Teams or Moodle as your course home base, try Sway!