Teams is a Microsoft communication and collaboration tool, combining video meetings, chat, file storage, and integration with Word, Office, Powerpoint, OneDrive, OneNote, Box, and more. Teams can be utilized in a number of ways, including as a collaboration tool for students working on team projects (after initial Team creation by the instructor).
Some faculty have inquired about an alternative to Zoom for synchronous meetings with students. While Teams does not have all the features of Zoom, it can be considered as an alternative. See Video Conferencing Tool Comparison for more details.
The Teams integration with Canvas currently only offers the ability to create a Teams meeting from Canvas.
The following are benefits to setting up a Team for your course:
- messaging/chatting with students in real time
- instant video chatting individuals or groups
- taking notes during video chats (w/ 20 users or less) and having them save directly to your chat feed (helping you to track what was discussed in office hours, meetings for group projects, etc.)
- syncing Team meetings to your Outlook calendar
- quickly accessing files saved to OneDrive for Business
- creating class wikis
- providing a communication experience similar to that of the workplace
- students can be allowed to create their own channels in order to coordinate for group projects or to create shared learning spaces
