Teaching on Teams? ISG is Here to Help

ISG develops guidance to support University staff using Microsoft Teams for 2021/2022 school year

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the use of Microsoft Teams by the University for business purposes as well as to support hybrid teaching. In response to the increased adoption of Microsoft Teams, particularly in learning and teaching, the ISG is launching a project to develop standards and publish guidance for using MS Teams for teaching during the 2021/2022 academic year.

The guidance is intended to help teachers understand how MS Teams complements, rather than replaces, the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and other teaching tools offered by the University such as Replay, Blackboard Collaborate and Zoom. In addition, the deliverables will link to existing guidance and training on community building and collaboration tools as well as expand on best practices and case study examples.

The project will also define and implement processes to increase consistency of student experience in teaching, facilitate ease of reporting and clarify support work between ISG and Colleges’ local arrangements. Overall, the project seeks to provide students with a consistent Teams for teaching experience, reduce administration costs and risk of manual error in set up of Teams site for teaching use, provide teaching staff with good practice guidance on using Teams and establish support responsibilities for Teams for teaching.

The project team is pooling the expertise of staff across ISG with College and School staff to support academic staff and enhance the student experience of using MS Teams. The project aims to have the standards and guidance published and made available to teaching staff by the end of August, prior to the start of semester one in September 2021.