Guidance on setting up live tutorials in Teams and what you should consider before. If you are planning a live session you may want to first consider using the University's lecture recording or virtual classroom tools (Collaborate and Zoom), they all integrate with Learn, allowing events to be embedded in the course and easily found by students. If you do decide to use Teams for live tutorials there are some things you should consider in your planning. In Teams, the person who creates an event is known as the Meeting Organiser. When an event is held, only the Meeting Organiser can manage breakout rooms, opening and closing rooms while the event is live. This means that for any Teams tutorials with breakout rooms, the person who created the meeting must attend all tutorials that will use breakout rooms. Microsoft does have plans to update the breakout room features in 21/22, but if this could be a problem you may want to consider using the virtual classroom tools. Options for setting up Teams meetings All live sessions in Teams are called ‘Meetings’. You can schedule meetings in two ways: As a meeting in a Teams channel. Everyone who is a member of that Teams channel can join the event. This will allow you to set up meetings from the channel inviting everyone in that channel to join the event. Any chat or files shared will be retained on the channel and viable for all channel members. For Class Teams, membership will be updated if students enrol late gaining access to the general teams and any meetings. Channels with membership for subgroups will need to add students to those channels. As a meeting in Teams Calendar (or Outlook Calendar) If you need to invite only a subset of students you will need to set up a meetng in your Teams calendar (or outlook). These meetings and related chat discussions or files will not be visable in the Class Team. Expand all Collapse all Creating a meeting As a reminder, before setting up any Teams meetings you need to first consider if you will need breakout sessions as only the Meeting Organiser can manage breakout rooms, opening and closing rooms while the event is live. If this could be a problem you may want to consider using Collaborate or Zoom. In the Teams app, click the Calendar icon. Find the right time slot and click on it. The New Meeting screen opens: Add a clear title for the meeting, set the duration to the correct length, and add explanatory text in the details. The details can include formatting and hyperlinks if you wish. Adding invites, either: invite the channel: Choose your Class Team and channel in the "Add channel" box. At the time of the event, students will need to open the Teams app at the right time and join the event via the channel. If you need anyone who is not a member of the channel to attend, you can add their emails individually but they will only have access to chat or files shared during the meeting. invite only a subset: add the email addresses of students to invite, in the same box as the staff attendees. Students will receive an email inviting them to the event, and it will appear in their Outlook calendar. You can also invite people external to the University (e.g. NHS staff), using other email addresses. If you need to make the meeting repeat, click the ‘Does not repeat’ drop down, and choose another option such as Daily or Weekly. Click Send. This will send an email message with the meeting invite to all attendees you added. For Outlook users the event will automatically be added to their Outlook calendar. Advanced options In the Teams app, click the Calendar icon, and find your event in the calendar. Click on it and click Edit. Click Meeting Options at the top. A set of advanced options for the meeting will open in your web browser. Depending on the size of the event and the nature of your teaching, you may wish to change some options. Eg to change “Who can present” to Only Me. Related Links See the general Teams pages for more information on Setting up Teams meetings Teams breakout rooms This article was published on 2024-10-08
