Starting in the fall semester of 2024, all video conferencing and online meetings at VIU will move to Microsoft Teams. For instructors, this will mean some changes to how you set up and run your synchronous online sessions. Most of these changes will be minor. Key features for teaching and learning that you used in Zoom are also available in Teams. CIEL will be offering a range of options to help instructors with this transition in the spring preparation time.
The IT department is currently working on streamlining the processes for getting students into Microsoft Teams. More information on how your students can be added to a class team to allow you to make use of the whole Teams suite of tools will be available in August.
We strongly recommend not inviting students into Teams until these processes are finalized so you are not creating extra work for yourself or for the IT team. There will be support available in August to ensure those instructors who want to set up a Team for their class are able to do so in time for the semester start.
Spring Sessions
The following webinars and workshops will be offered several times through April and May to give everyone an opportunity to attend. To sign up for a session, click the View Dates and Sign Up button for the session and select one of the dates and times, or go to the CIEL Event Calendar and select the session in the calendar. All of these sessions are being offered over Teams and you will receive the meeting link in a confirmation email once you have registered for a session.
Teams Meetings 101
Join us for a 30 minute introduction to scheduling and hosting meetings in Teams. In this session we will go over the options you have when scheduling meetings for your course and give a high level overview of the controls and functions available once your meeting begins.
This session is aimed at Instructors who have minimal or no experience hosting meetings in Teams. By the end of this session you should know how to set up a meeting, invite your students, and use essential meeting controls such as enabling or muting your microphone, chat, and screen sharing.
Teaching in Teams: Best Practices
Impactful online teaching hasn’t changed, but the technology we will be using for online meetings will be new to many instructors in Fall 2024. Join us for this 60 minute workshop where we will focus on ways that Teams can support pedagogical practices to enhance engagement, provide effective feedback and build community in your course.
Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms are an essential feature when teaching over video conferencing software. In this session we will look at the key differences between Teams and Zoom breakout rooms and give you some tips for how to set up and manage breakout rooms for use with your students. By the end of this session you will know how to set up breakout rooms, assign students automatically or manually to rooms, and communicate with people while they are in their breakout rooms.
Collaborating During Meetings
Teams is designed with collaboration in mind. Join us for this 30 minute session where we will look at some of the built in collaborative features of Teams and talk about how you can use these to engage with your students during online sessions and how your students can use these to work on group projects outside of class time.
This session is meant for anyone who teaches online and wants to engage students in collaborative activities during online meetings. By the end of the session you will know how to upload a shared document, create white boards and Loop elements in the meeting, and how to schedule meetings to allow for asynchronous chat and collaboration between sessions.
Accessibility in Teams
Accessible online teaching is about more than just enabling captions in your Teams meetings. Join us for this 60 minute workshop where we will explore key principles of accessibility and how Teams can help you support learners who come to your class with a variety of needs.
Keep Teams Meetings Secure
Microsoft has built a number of features and functions in Teams to help you ensure that your meeting stays secure. Join us for this thirty minute webinar where we will walk through settings you can choose when scheduling your meeting as well as best practices for sharing meeting links and managing participants to minimize the chance of any unexpected disruptions from participants while you are hosting a meeting or class session on Teams.
This session is for anyone who is running Teams meetings, but will be especially useful for anyone who runs meetings with community members, external colleagues or others who are not part of the VIU Teams license. By the end of this session you will know how to schedule a meeting so all students join as attendees, how to selectively give and take away presenter permissions within a meeting, and a few ways you can quickly shut down participant activity should that be necessary.
Guest Speakers, Community Members, and Colleagues Outside of VIU
VIU students and employees have Teams licenses through VIU. This gives all of our VIU community access to a set of tools and features to allow seamless collaboration and file sharing through Teams. But what about when we need to bring in someone who isn’t a VIU employee or student?
In this 30 minute webinar we will look at which features in Teams work for everyone (even if they don’t have a Teams account) and how you can design your meetings to ensure external users can participate in all meeting activities.
More information on sessions for August will be posted later this summer along with a schedule for those sessions. If you want to be notified whenever we add new information, you can subscribe to the CIEL blog.