Table of contents
What to do if you only want to schedule an occasional online lesson or send chat messages to students?
Important! The Teams Course Connector offers many possibilities, but also requires coordination with your colleagues and working arrangements with students. If you do not want to use this (yet), it is also possible to facilitate online lessons in an easier way.
You could use the following options:
Schedule an online meeting via Teams Calendar
See this article.
Create chat with students
You can also create a separate chat in Teams. You do not have the extensive functionality of a team environment, but you can communicate with your students.
- You can invite individual students here, but also an entire timetable group (not for parttime school).
- You can change the name of the chat to the name of the class or group after you have created it. To do this, click on the pen behind the name of the chat.
How do you use Teams as an extension of your Brightspace course?
This article focuses on using Microsoft Teams as an extension of Brightspace. It is possible to create a linked Teams environment from a Brightspace course environment.
Brightspace is the formal environment in which definitive educational content is placed, Teams is the environment in which to collaborate (Source: 20191133 Contentmatrix DIGITAL.pdf)
Teams as a collaboration environment with colleagues is not considered in this article.
Based on the registrations in a Brightspace course environment, members are kept synchronous in the Teams environment.
The overview below shows what you use Teams and Brightspace for.
If you want to go further than just planning online lessons or chatting with a class/group, we recommend using the Teams Course Connector.
| Teams | Brightspace |
|---|---|
| Collaboration between and with students on M365 files. Placing annotation and feedback in intermediate products (also as peer feedback) is also possible. |
Handing in and assessing both intermediate and final products. |
| Organizing learning: Posting information about the module and educational content (including copyrighted content, accessibility of education, course template), arranging learning activities, granting access to content. | |
| Online meetings and classes. |
|
| Use of integrated applications such as MS Whiteboard, Planner, OneNote, Forms. |
Link with (LTI) education applications. Such as peer feedback, portfolio, review, plagiarism check, quizzes. |
| Reporting: A basis for overviews for teachers and students, copyrights, learning analytics. |
|
| Content is not archived, the Teams environment is deleted 6 months after the course is completed. |
Content is archived in accordance with legislation. |
| You can communicate with students about the learning unit (news and announcements) in both Teams and Brightspace. In both applications you can communicate with all students, as well as with subgroups and classes. In Teams, it can be set that students cannot respond to messages in the channel 'General'. It is important to make the same choice within Brightspace as much as possible to be consistent. | |
You can communicate with students about the learning unit (news and announcements) in both Teams and Brightspace. In both applications you can communicate with all students, as well as with subgroups and classes. In Teams, it can be set that students cannot respond to messages in the channel 'General'.
It is important to make one choice within the program as much as possible and to be consistent.
How does the Teams integration with Brightspace work?
The MS Teams Course Connector may not be visible in your course. Schools have the option to turn this on or off for the entire school.
The Teams Course Connector is available in every Brightspace course environment. This can be found at the bottom of your Home page.
With the Teams Course Connector, the lecturer (if he or she has the Lecturer A role) can create a team environment that is linked to the Brightspace course environment. The users from the Brightspace course are automatically enrolled in the teams environment and kept in sync.
There are several considerations you can make to determine whether the use of the teams environment is currently of added value for your course.
For example, the teams environment can be used to:
- Facilitate students in collaborating on products.
- Allow students to provide feedback on each other's files or posts.
- Communicate with a class/class, subgroup, or all course participants.
- Create channel meetings, for example for online classes or events. This can be done for classes as well as for all participants of the course.
- Using additional tools, such as a whiteboard, planner, wiki
However, using the Teams Course Connector also has some disadvantages/points for attention.
Disadvantages and points of attention when using the Teams Course Connector
- After creating the teams environment, manual configuration is still required (adjust settings, set up channels for specific classes or groups, add members to the extra created channels). See also the step-by-step plan regarding the configuration.
- It is advisable to make work agreements with your students:
- What is the teams environment used for, see also the table at the top of this message? And for what not?
- What do we expect from each other with regard to posting messages and replying to them?
- How do we share files with each other and which files can they be, for example?
- If you only want to use Teams for online lessons and communicate with your class, the use of the Teams Course Connector is not recommended. Simpler options are available (see alternatives later in this document).
- If sections are used in Brightspace (usually used for classes or intake moments), you can check that a team environment is created for each section. We do not recommend this at the moment (with the exception of SPS where sections are used for different intake moments). This results in a very large number of Teams environments for teachers. In this document we describe an alternative method.
Make a considered decision when using the Course Connector. If in doubt, consult your academy's TLC-advisor.
Advice configuration Teams Course Connector
If you want to use the Teams Course Connector, follow this step-by-step plan and copy the settings shown:
You will see the connector in your course.
- Click on the blue “Create Course Team” button
The following screen appears. Choose the options you want. If you are unsure about these options, please consult your academy's TLC advisor.
With the option “Create a team for each section” multiple teams environments are created (one Teams environment per class). Decide with your colleagues whether you are going to set up and use one team environment together or whether each class will have its own team environment. Both options have different advantages and disadvantages.
| One teams environment |
Team environment per section |
|---|---|
| One team environment for the entire course. |
With a large number of classes also results in a large number of Teams environments. |
| Students and instructors of all classes are in one team environment. If you want to split this into private channels per class, you have to set this up manually. |
Students of a class and involved teacher are immediately in the right team environment and can get to work. You can also work in subgroups within your class by creating channels for this purpose. |
| When setting up private channels per class, some functionalities are canceled (such as Planners). |
You can also use all the possibilities that MS Teams offers per class. |
Adjust settings in Teams
Every team member has the same rights after creation. Adjust this as follows:
Click next to the team name on the 3 dots and choose Manage team
- Click on Settings
- Click on Member permissions (Lidmachtingen).
The next screen appears. Consider the correct permissions.
- If necessary, also edit the settings of the General channel so that students cannot post messages here.
If you chose to create one team environment (so not per section), the Teams environment only has one general channel in which all members and owners are together. If you have opted for a team environment per section, you can skip the following steps.
Adjust settings for a teams environment with 1 general channel
The advice is to create a separate channel for each class/class.
- Click the three dots next to the team name
- Click on Add channel (Kanaal toevoegen)
- Enter the name of the class or group.
- For privacy, choose “Shared” (Gedeeld).
- Uncheck “Share this channel with everyone on the team” (Dit kanaal delen met iedereen in het team).
- Finally, click Create (maken).
- Then you add the members of the class or group. This has to be done manually, by entering the names of the students one by one.
- Then click Share (Delen).
- Click on Open Your Team to go to the relevant Team in Microsoft Teams.
- Under Edit Settings, the right for team members to create private channels can still be adjusted. If you have created a Team for your course and later decide to also create Teams for each section, you can still create this under "Edit Settings".
You now have a usable Team environment in addition to your course environment in Brightspace. You can use these for various purposes.
The Teams environment always includes a tab that includes your Brightspace course environment.
You can always click through to Teams from the Brightspace course environment.
In this way, both environments are always connected.