Teaching in Teams: Key Features for Instruction and Collaboration

In the first post in this series we looked at what you needed to know to schedule and run a meeting in Teams. In this post we will look at some of the key meeting features that are often used when teaching online: breakout rooms, screen sharing, and chat.

Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms can be set up in any scheduled Teams meeting as long as you are the Organizer or Co-Organizer and you are using the Teams program installed on your computer. Meeting presenters and attendees can be assigned randomly or manually to Breakout Rooms once the meeting starts. Attendees and participants can join breakout rooms from their mobile device using the Teams app or with Teams in their browser if they don’t have the Teams software installed on their computer.

Create Breakout Rooms

You can create Breakout Rooms in advance of the meeting or set them up once the meeting has begun so that you only have to enroll students when the meeting is in progress instead of creating the rooms and then enrolling your students. For recurring meetings, the breakout rooms will persist unless you delete or change them so you only have to set up the breakout rooms once.

Before the Meeting Starts

This option is only available if you have added attendees using the email address associated with their VIU Teams account when scheduling the meeting.

  1. Go to your Teams calendar and open the meeting invite by double clicking on it or click once and then select Edit.
  2. Select the Breakout rooms tab
  3. Click Create rooms.
  4. Choose the number of rooms you want (up to 50) and click Add rooms.

By default, everyone in a Breakout Rooms has a presenter role which allows students to share their screen within the Breakout room. If you wish to change this setting you can edit the room options for each room by clicking the three little dots at the top of the room card. You can also edit the room name or delete a room you no longer need

After Starting the Meeting

When you launch a meeting you can immediately set up Breakout Rooms even if none of your attendees have joined yet.  You must be joining the meeting on a computer using the Teams program in order to manage Breakout Rooms.

  1. Launch the meeting by link or by clicking the Join button
  2. Click the Rooms button in the meeting control bar
  3. Choose how many rooms you want to create
  4. Select whether you want to assign people Automatically or Manually
    1. Note: Room assignment is only automatic if you create the room when participants are already in the meeting. If people join a meeting after you have set up rooms you will need to assign them to a room. 
  5. Click Create Rooms
  6. It may take a few seconds to create your rooms, once they are created you will see the Breakout Rooms pane with an Assign participants button along with other controls (add a room, send an announcement, delete, and settings)
Assign Participants to Breakout Rooms

Once all of your attendees are in your meeting, you can assign them to breakout rooms. Breakout rooms won’t open until you choose to open them so you can assign members to their rooms at any time.

  1. Click the Rooms button
  2. Click Assign Participants
  3. You have several options for assigning participants from the pane that opens
    1. Bulk assign participants to a specific room
      1. Check the box next to each person you want to assign or check the top box to select everyone
      2. Choose a room from the select a room drop down
      3. Click Save
         
    2. Manually assign a single participant to a room
      1. Click on the drop down for the participant in the Rooms column
      2. Select the room you want to put that person in
      3. When you are done connecting people to their groups, click Save
         
    3. Randomly assign unassigned participants to rooms
      1. Click Shuffle
      2. Select Only Unassigned People
      3. Anyone who was not previously assigned to a room will be randomly assigned to one until all participants are distributed as evenly as possible across your breakout rooms
      4. Click Save
         
    4. Randomly assign all participants to new rooms
      1. Click Shuffle
      2. Select Everyone
      3. Everyone will be assigned randomly to a breakout room, this may or may not be the same room they were in previously
      4. Click Save
         
  4. Once you have assigned all participants the Assign Participants button will be grey and you will see the purple Open button. Click this when you are ready to open the Breakout Rooms 

What is different in Teams

  • Only the meeting organizer needs to have Teams installed on their computer. Attendees assigned to breakout rooms can be using the browser version of Teams
  • You can choose whether to allow participants to return to the main meeting or not while breakout rooms are in use
  • Participants don’t have an ask for help button
  • As the meeting organizer, you will see all chat messages sent during breakout rooms as distinct chats in Teams and can respond to chats from breakout rooms even if you do not join the breakout room.

Screen Sharing

Teams gives you a number of options for sharing content with meeting attendees similar to what you are used to in Zoom. Some features in Teams are linked to attendee’s VIU Teams account so may not be available for guest speakers or other who are joining the meeting without being signed in to their account. In this post we are looking at how you will use Teams with your students, if you have questions about bringing in guest speakers or other external people, please contact us at learnsupport@viu.ca.

Share Your Screen
  1. Click Share
  2. Choose a Presenter Mode
    1. The default is content only but you can also choose between three options to show your video along with your shared content
  3. Select the screen you want to share to share everything happening on that screen. To share a specific window, click the image under the Windows heading and then click on the window you want to share.
  4. When you are done sharing click End Share
Annotate a Shared Screen

If you want to use annotation while sharing your screen, you will need to be running the meeting from the Teams application on your PC or Mac. Annotation cannot be initiated from Teams in your browser or on the mobile Teams app. Annotation is only available when you share your full screen, if you are sharing a single window or program you will not see these options.

  1. At the top of your shared screen hover your mouse over the You’re sharing your screen text to view the share screen toolbar
  2. Click Annotate
  3. Select the annotation tool you want from the toolbar that appears.
  4. When you are done sharing your screen, click Stop.

Note: Annotation is powered by Microsoft Whiteboards and so is only available for people who are signed in to their VIU Teams account. If you have external guests in your meeting, we recommend using PowerPoint Live which will give you a limited set of annotation tools that will allow everyone to see your annotations.

Share with PowerPoint Live

PowerPoint Live allows you to upload a PowerPoint presentation into Teams to create a more interactive presentation mode for you and your students. When you present using PowerPoint live, you see the Presenter View in PowerPoint which includes any notes you have added to your slide and PowerPoint annotation options.

Attendees viewing a PowerPoint Live slide deck have additional controls available to them including the ability to navigate through slides at their own pace, to convert slides to high contrast to improve accessibility, and to translate the slides to another language. If an attendee moves to a different slide than what you are presenting they will see a Sync to Presenter button which jumps them to the slide you’re currently sharing.

  1. Click on Share.
  2. Select a PowerPoint from those listed or scroll down to Browse OneDrive or Browse My Computer and find your presentation where it is saved on your computer or OneDrive.
  3.  You will see presenter mode of your PowerPoint including built in PowerPoint annotation options such as the laser pointer, a marker and a highlighter as well as any notes you have added to your slides.
    • Attendees will only see the shared slide and any annotations you add, they will not see your notes.
  4. When you are done, click Stop Sharing

What is different in Teams

  • PowerPoint Live gives you the presenter view of your slides and allows you to give attendees flexibility in how they view and interact with your slides.
  • Excel Live allows in-meeting collaboration on an Excel spreadsheet
  • Only logged in members of VIU’s Teams license can see and collaborate on Whiteboards or view annotations on a shared screen

Chat

Meeting attendees, presenters and organizers can use the Chat in a meeting to send messages to everyone.

  1. Click on the Chat button in the meeting control bar to open the chat pane
  2. Type your message in the box provided and press enter or click the send button to share it with everyone in the meeting. You can also use the buttons below the  text area to access formatting, attach a file and more.

Note: The Apps listed under Add an App are set by Microsoft and do not reflect the apps that are enabled for the VIU Account. If you want to use an app with your students, please review the IT guidelines for requesting new software. Depending on the nature of the app you want to use, you may need to complete a Privacy Impact Assessment as part of the review process.

What is different in Teams

  • There is no option for private messages within the meeting chat in Teams. All messages in chat will be visible to everyone in the chat.
  • You can set up meetings to have a chat that is accessible beyond the meeting to keep the collaboration and community building going
  • Only people on the VIU Teams license can upload files or access files uploaded by others. If you have a guest speaker or external person who will be joining your class sessions, consider using email or a shared folder in One Drive rather than the Teams meeting chat to share files with that person. 

What’s Next?

CIEL will continue to post information on how you can use Teams with your students throughout the summer. We will also have a number of webinars and workshops starting in mid-August to help you finalize your preparation for Fall 2024. To receive an email when we post new content you can subscribe to our blog: 


If you have questions or would like to talk about using Teams in your course, we would be very happy to meet with you. CIEL offers one on one consultations on pedagogical topics and around our learning technologies. To request a consultation you can fill out this web form or send an email to learnsupport@viu.ca. When emailing, we suggest including at least two days and times that will work for your schedule. 

Posted

in

by