Microsoft Teams for seminars, tutorials and meetings

For situations that need more interaction with other participants than a pre-recorded lecture, Microsoft Teams is the recommended option and is the software that is supported by the University.  All teaching that appears in the Lecture List will be scheduled in Teams by the Timetabling and Events Assistant, with links being provided to presenters and students in advance of the session.  Recording of Teams sessions is available to on request on a per user basis.  

The University has a site licence, so everyone with a Single Sign-on will have access to this tool. This includes students, who can organise their own meetings/workgroups as well as taking part in those you organise for them.

Getting started

Please download the Teams client from the Microsoft website, and register with your Oxford e-mail address.

Using Microsoft Outlook, you can create a Teams meeting as easily as you can create a calendar entry (select 'New Item' instead of 'New Meeting', or schedule it as an 'on line' meeting).  You can also schedule meetings from within Teams (but please note, teaching on the Lecture List will be scheduled by the Timetabling and Events Assistant, so seminar leaders do not need to do this for themselves).  You do not need to create new 'Teams' or 'Channels' in order to set up meetings, but you do need the e-mail addresses of all participants. 

For full Teams functionality - including a dedicated Conversation (i.e. message board) and file store for your defined group, and of course the virtue of having a pre-defined constituency for communication - you will need to get IT Services to create a Team for you by filling in the online request form, but you don’t need that for day-to-day teaching.

Teams is the intended means of conducting Faculty meetings (committees, Law Board, faculty meetings, one-to-ones, etc.), so it is recommended that you set this up and test it as soon as possible.  

If you would like to run a trial meeting, or need help to set up a meeting, or aren't sure how to obtain the e-mail addresses of a particular cohort of students, please contact Marina Amiconi. 

Using Teams

While there is much about using Teams that can be quickly discovered by plunging in and experimenting, inevitably some features are less obvious. Clearly, organising and presenting online classes involves some sophisticated technology and these three instruction videos offer a thorough but accessible guide to most of the key features.

Key points to note:

• Please don't schedule anything that will appear in the Lecture List as this will be scheduled on your behalf.
• You don't need to create new 'Teams' to be able to set up seminars/meetings.

(The link to the third video opens in YouTube, and will start about 9 minutes in, as there is some earlier content that is not relevant to Oxford users, and may even mislead, though it does include some background/very basic introductory material.)

• A Teams meeting can include up to 200 particpants
  • (Different numbers are referred to in some documents/videos, but this ceiling has been confirmed with the University's central IT Services, who manage the licence.)
• IT Services have produced a page of tips-and-tricks for successfully running larger meetings. 
• Teams can also be downloaded as an app to use on your devices (tablets, phones etc).
• The in-built recording facility can only be enabled by IT Services on a case-by-case basis. See the note below about how to request this.
• Assignments in Teams are part of a whole eco-system that makes up a sort of VLE-lite. Many people will already be familiar with WebLearn’s assignments toolkit, or will be getting familiar with the Canvas equivalent. Both of these make use of pre-constructed class cohorts, while Teams Assignments would require academics to build their own class rosters manually, which is likely to be a signifcicant disincentive, and we are not recommending the use of this particular tool.

For information, there is a Zoom | Teams feature comparison table illustrating the main differences (and significant number of similarities) between the two products.