Microsoft Office 365 is a popular
cloud-based technology known most for its productivity apps, Outlook, Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint. In addition to these applications (apps), Microsoft
Office 365 offers other applications and services that could potentially transform
the teaching and learning environment for educators. Microsoft Teams, a less
popular app in the Microsoft Office 365 collection, is a safe and secure platform
to create inclusive, student-centered instruction and learning opportunities.
Microsoft
Teams is a digital hub with a seamless platform that permits educators to
create a space for communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and
creativity. Utilizing Teams, educators are
able to add content, assignments, and posts, while bringing to one location other
apps such as OneNote and Stream. Further, students can hold conversations with
the Teams app.
With
Microsoft Teams, educators can build a collaborative classroom. Teams serves as
a hub where educators and students interact online and as a workspace for
communications, sharing files and even meeting online. Within Teams, educators
set up a class made up of channels. Each channel is dedicated to a topic.
Students work on assigned tasks within a channel. Teams allows educators to
share the students’ feedback individually or directly with the group. If
feedback is shared with the group, students can use the feedback for further
discussion online or personally during a face-to-face class session.
In
addition to using Teams for communication and collaboration, educators can
empower students through personalized assignments and individual feedback. Educators
can manage assignments using Teams to create, assign, collect, and provide
feedback on assignments. Further, rubrics gained popularity with educators as a
means of communicating expectations for an assignment, assessing student work, and
grading final papers/projects. Teams embodies a system that all study
materials, assignments, and feedback are in one place and easily accessible
online from different devices.
Zacharová and Sokolová (2019) used Microsoft
Teams in a
classroom management course for pre-service teachers. Study materials,
including case students, worksheets, and problem-based tasks are all a part of Teams.
Students worked at their own pace and chose when and how long they worked on
the assignments. Teams supports a system of interactive engagement for teachers
and students. Students watched videos and used the chat room to share ideas and
comments. The instructors provided feedback to students.
In
conclusion, think of Microsoft Teams as a digital hub to bring educators,
students, applications, conversations, assignments, and feedback together in
one location. More importantly, educators and students have free access to
Microsoft Office 365 through their academic institution or directly through
Microsoft (Simkin, 2018). Students can work on group projects and hold
discussions related to assignments. Educators can monitor how things are going
in each group. Also, assignment submissions and feedback take place in a
seamless environment. Microsoft Teams can change the way teaching and learning
happens.
References:
Simkin, M. (2018). Embedding
technology in the history classroom. Agora, 53(1), 17–20.
Zacharová & Sokolová (2019).
Developing professional vision: An on-line course of Adlerian classroom
management for pre-service teachers. ELearning & Software for Education,
2, 79–84. doi:10.12753/2066-026X-19-079
Cite this blog:
Washington, G. (2019, December 28). Don’t Leave Teams in the Cloud [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://pedagogybeforetechnology.blogspot.com/
