Elliott Tech Recipes

Uniting lecture materials, student collaboration, and communication

Description: Instructors can use Microsoft Teams in a course to combine file sharing, collaboration, and communication in a single platform that lives outside of Canvas (i.e., Teams is not currently integrated with Canvas at IU; Canvas integration is planned for fall 2021). This combination of tools allows you to, for example, 1) save and share your lecture materials such as hand-drawn diagrams in the Class Notebook (i.e., OneNote), 2) bring those diagrams up during office hours to address student questions, 3) link to the diagrams in Posts to start a brainstorm or discussion around a topic, then 4) have students collaborate in groups on a subsequent assignment in channels using chat and file sharing. As with most new technologies in education, instructors need to model and foster frequent usage in Teams to encourage students to use it.

Setting up a Team

Ingredients:

  • Microsoft Teams

Directions:

  1. (Teams) Create a Team for your class. See Create and set up a private team for your class for details.
  2. Select Class Notebook, Set up a OneNote Class Notebook, then Blank Notebook. Choose which sections to include in students’ private spaces, and select Create.
  3. See Allow others to join your team for details about adding students to your team.

Supporting group work

Ingredients:

  • Microsoft Teams

Directions:

The following instructions allow students to create their own standard or private channels. As an instructor, you could alternatively create your own private channels and add students to them one at a time. Note: To learn more about Teams’ use in classes and to provide feedback that we can relay to Microsoft and Canvas, join the Microsoft Teams Faculty Feedback Group.

  1. (Teams) Log into Microsoft Teams and click the Teams icon.
  2. Locate your course team, open the More Options (...) menu, and select Manage team.
  3. Select Settings and expand Member permissions. 
  4. Select Allow members to create and update channels. Consider selecting Allow members to create private channels; please see Private channels in Microsoft Teams to learn the differences between standard and private channels.
    Note: Private channels are only visible to the private channel’s owner and everyone that person has added to the channel. Therefore, a private channel is even invisible to instructors, unless they have been added to that channel.
  5. Share instructions with students about how to Create a channel in Teams.

Resources:

Sharing lecture materials

Ingredients:

  • iPad (or touchscreen laptop or tablet)
  • Apple Pencil (or other active stylus)
  • Zoom
  • Microsoft Teams
  • OneNote App

Directions:

  1. (iPad) Open OneNote and select the Class Notebook and a page or create a new page, in the _Content Library.
    Note: If you do not see your Class Notebook displayed in the Recent Notes column, select More Notebooks and find your new Class Notebook.
  2. Enter the same Zoom room on your computer and iPad.
  3. (iPad) Tap Share Content, then Screen. Navigate back to OneNote.
  4. (iPad + Apple Pencil) Draw or enter text in OneNote. After class, students will still have access to read or copy (but not edit) the images and notes.