Teaching Teams and Multimedia Assessments 

​(Microsoft Teams and team work skills)

I have been developing teaching resources to support students learning how to work in team projects for many years now. On this site you will find the latest culmination of those resources and how we apply them in the context of a third year semester-long team documentary video assessment. 
A lot more details of the semester plan can be found on my blog. 
Along with examples of student videos, the links below lead to some tutorial resources for working with Microsoft Teams (here) and a set of team training activities that I developed initially for incorporation in a large 1st year undergraduate class at The University of Queensland and have adapted (and used in Microsoft Teams Class Notebook) for facilitating teamwork in my 3rd year class for their documentary assignment (here). 

Other places I've talked about these tasks:
Faculty Focus: Assignments with Significance
Podcast: HERE

I've also written a blog about my experience so far this semester so you can get some context for how and why I chose to use Teams in the first place - HERE

​I want to make a few key points that I've had more time to think about since the beginning of semester:
  • When students are going to use video to chat, encourage them to check what is behind them. Many will be calling from dorm rooms or bedrooms in share houses and it's important they are aware that others will see their personal surrounds.
  • They should also warn any housemates that there is a video call so they are aware that they may be onscreen if they walk behind.
  • For traditional lectures: it works best to use lecture capture software like Echo Engage (this is what we use for all lectures normally) the good thing about this is it also puts less processing pressure on Microsoft Teams. An alternative that I've used before is voice recording straight over the slides within PowerPoint. This can then be uploaded to Moodle or Blackboard as usual.
  • If using Teams to call a large group of students, get them to turn off their own cameras and mute the microphones when not asking a question - this should help with connectivity (my laptop struggles with lots of screens all at once) and removing noise interference. You can use the front page for them to request asking a question to avoid people talking over the top of each other which makes it impossible in any conference call software.
  • My perspective is that the most important thing right now is providing students with an anchoring point during the turmoil. This means instead of using our lecture time for lectures, I'll be face-to-face chatting with each small group for 10-15 minutes (or longer if they need it) to see where their progress is, ask them if they've watched the last lecture, ask them some questions about what they've been learning. They can ask me anything and I don't mind if the conversation turns to wider things if they choose to. I'll also be doing this with my personal tutees - weekly informal chats over coffee - just with everyone in their own physical spaces. Being online can feel isolating without the usual lectures where students know they can ask the lecturer something - and it may get more isolating without normal social and sports events. This is why I'll be enforcing the weekly video chats. Of course this is easier with my class of 24 than it will be with a much larger class - in that case perhaps asking demonstrators/tutors (depending on the country you're in!) to help might be a good way to maintain a human interaction.