Teaching with Microsoft Teams: Student Engagement Strategies

Teaching with Microsoft Teams

Student Engagement Strategies

Wendy M. Tietz, PhD

The information in this book was correct at the time of publication, but the Author does not assume any liability for loss or damage caused by errors or omissions.

Copyright © 2023 Wendy M. Tietz

ISBN: 978-1-959639-05-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at the address below.

First edition printing 2023 in the United States

Kent, Ohio, USA

www.breakneckcreekpress.com

Contents

Preface

The Author

1. Why Should You Use Microsoft Teams?

2. How Do You Get Started with Teams?

3. How Do You Onboard Students to Teams for a Smooth Semester?

4. How Can You Create an Engaging Live Online Class Session?

5. How Do You Share Your Screen and Chat in a Teams Meeting Class—with Just One Screen?

6. How Can You Track Student Attendance or Participation in Teams and Teams Meetings?

7. How Can You Communicate with Your Class in Teams?

8. How Can You Structure Your Team while Using a Learning Management System?

9. How Do You Schedule and Record Class Teams Meetings?

10. How Can Groups Work Together During a Live Teams Meeting?

11. What’s Cool about Group Work in Teams Outside of Class?

12. What Can You Do in a Class Teams Meeting with Microsoft Whiteboard?

13. What Can You Do in a Class Teams Meeting with OneDrive?

14. How Can Polling Questions Be Used in Teams Meetings and in Teams?

15. What Are Some Polling Software Options for Teams and Teams Meetings?

16. How Can You Use Teams or Teams Meetings for Office Hours?

17. How Can You Create a Virtual Chatbot in Teams to Answer Student Questions Outside of Class?

18. How Can Elgato Stream Deck Help with Synchronous Teams Class Sessions?

19. How Do You Deal with Technology Anxiety? And What’s Next?

Apendix A: Open-Ended Questions for Synchronous Class Sessions

Appendix B: Open-Ended Discussion Questions for Asynchronous Classes

Appendix C: Examples of Off-Topic Polling Questions

Appendix D: Getting Started with Microsoft OneDrive

Preface

From using polls and breakout rooms within Teams Meetings, to using Microsoft Teams for asynchronous class activities, this book is full of unique tips and tricks that will take the engagement in your class to a whole new level. Whether you are a novice or experienced instructor, this guide to using Microsoft Teams to engage students has something for everyone.

The first nine chapters cover the basics of teaching with Teams. Within this section, we will cover the essential components of using Teams and provide answers to many frequently asked questions. Specifically, we will explore why Microsoft Teams and Teams Meetings are valuable, how to get started each semester to on-board students, how to facilitate engaging meetings, how to share your screen during group meetings if you only have one screen, how to track student attendance or participation in framework/meeting notes within Teams, how to communicate with your class outside of physical meetings within the app itself, how to structure a Team while integrating with a Learning Management System (LMS), and lastly, how to schedule and record class Teams Meetings.

Chapters 10 - 16 will provide you with ways to engage students while teaching with Teams and Teams Meetings. You’ll learn how to make the most of group work inside and outside of class, as well as how to use Microsoft Whiteboard, OneDrive, and polling questions with Teams Meetings. Plus, you’ll get advice on how to make the most of office hours with Teams or Teams Meetings.

In Chapters 17 - 19, you will learn about using a chatbot in Teams to answer student questions outside of class. You will also learn how an Elgato Stream Deck can help make the chat within Teams Meetings easier to manage during class.

The appendices contain various additional resources. Appendices A and B provide various open-ended discussion questions that can spark meaningful conversations between you and your students. These questions will help engage them in a more active dialogue, whether in a synchronous Teams Meeting or in an asynchronous discussion. Appendix C includes off-topic polling questions. These fun questions bring life to the discussions by stimulating creativity and further engaging students, ultimately making the class a more enjoyable learning experience. Need help getting started with Microsoft OneDrive? Appendix D is a basic introduction to OneDrive if you have not yet used it.

Now let’s talk about what this book is not. This book is not a detailed how-to in terms of what to click in Microsoft Teams to make the actions happen. This book is about strategies for using Teams to help increase student engagement in synchronous and asynchronous classes using Teams and Teams Meetings. Where instructions are needed, they are either included or a link to the Microsoft guidance on that topic is provided. Because links can change over time, I have also included the phrase that you can enter in a search engine to find the topic guidance related to the discussion.

Microsoft Teams also has gradebook and assignment features. An entire book could be written about these features. I have chosen not to include those features here, as most faculty have these features included in their institution’s Learning Management System (LMS) and are likely not looking to replace those LMS features.

In addition, Microsoft continually updates Teams. What I have included in this book is current at the time of writing, but may change at any time. However, the basic principles will likely remain the same.

Technology can be intimidating at times; However, once you utilize the tips and walk through the basics outlined in this book, you will have the knowledge and tools needed to effectively use Teams in your synchronous and asynchronous classes.

Acknowledgements

This book represents ideas and techniques developed over several years of interacting with my students. So special thanks, first and foremost, go to the students who have been in my classes, participated in these activities, and helped inform the adaptation and evolution of those activities. Students have been, and continue to be, at the center of everything I do.

Next, I would like to acknowledge and thank Jenny Marcinkiewicz, LeighAnn Tomaswick, Deborah Spake, and Wei Li, all from Kent State University, for their support for my participation in the Faculty Fellows program, which provided me the opportunity to work with the Center for Teaching and Learning to further develop my work with teaching using Microsoft Teams. Jenny and LeighAnn met with me numerous times to help me develop my thinking and writing, and I am grateful for their guidance and advice. Deborah and Wei have always supported my efforts to try new activities in class.

David Veits and Alicia Marchand of Kent State University are the two people who guided my initial foray into using Microsoft Teams and Teams Meetings with my large synchronous classes and my asynchronous classes. Their constant technical support and friendship helped me overcome some initial stumbling blocks and gave me confidence to explore the possibilities with Microsoft Teams.

My gratitude goes to Susan Jansen for her editing skills and writing guidance. Thanks also to Jen Allen for proofreading and friendship, and to Sarah Miracle for her formatting and proofreading. Thanks too to my friends, Tracie Miller, Barbara Miracle, Kerrie Collins, Laurie Walker, and many others who spent untold hours listening to me and encouraging me to write and finish this book.

Thanks to my family members, Jonathan, Nicholas, Kelsey, Eugenia, Sophia, and Alexei, who have inspired me and been bright lights in my life. And finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Russ, who has been at my side for many decades and has always supported my ventures and writing…and to our cats, Jubilee and BOGO, who spent many hours purring on my lap as I wrote this book.

An Invitation

Please let me know how you use the activities in this book and how you use Microsoft Teams in your own classes. Also, if you have an activity or idea that you would like to share for a future edition of this book, please contact me at wtietz@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

Wendy Tietz

Kent, Ohio, USA

The Author

Wendy M. Tietz, PhD, CPA, CGMA, CMA, CSCA, MCT, is an accounting professor at Kent State University. She teaches introductory financial and managerial accounting in various formats. She also teaches advanced management accounting and advanced accounting analytics and technology. Dr. Tietz is active in the American Accounting Association (AAA), the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Management Accounting (IMA), and several other professional organizations. She has taught more than 20,000 students to date and has received several teaching awards, including the American Accounting Association Cook Deloitte Foundation Prize for undergraduate teaching, and the IMA R. Lee Brummet Exemplary Educator Award. She is the co-author of two introductory accounting textbooks with Pearson Education. She is passionate about teaching and using educational technology to enhance student engagement. Dr. Tietz earned her undergraduate degree and MBA from the University of Akron, and her PhD in Education specializing in Curriculum and Instruction from Kent State University. She and her husband live in their adopted hometown of Kent, Ohio.

Chapter 1

Why Should You Use Microsoft Teams?

The power of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Meetings allows you to interact with your students and foster a sense of engagement and community among learners. Microsoft Teams is an electronic hub for team collaboration that integrates people, content, and technology into one software platform.

For ease of readability, we will drop the word Microsoft from in front of Teams and Teams Meetings throughout this book.

With a Teams for Education license that universities and colleges typically have, four types of Teams can be created. In this book, we focus on Class Teams, which. have special privacy settings designed to protect student data. Instructors can use Microsoft Teams with their classes to share notes, chats, meetings, apps, and more. Instructors can create groups within a Team; those groups can be private to just those group members or accessible to all class members. Within these groups, resources such as files can be shared, and students can work on projects together and chat with the group or the whole class.

What Can Teams Do?

Higher education institutions typically provide a learning management system such as Canvas, Blackboard, and D2L, for faculty to use for their classes. Learning management systems can also be referred to as course