What is MS Teams?
MS Teams is Microsoft product available as part of Office 365. Teams as a digital service is available to QUB Staff and students.
What is the benefit of MS teams? You can set up your own team for teaching, meetings, etc., and anything you share automatically goes to those team members. This can be done via the Teams App online or the desktop version.
Getting Started
In Queen’s University Belfast, staff and students have access to office 365 by going to www.office.com, click Sign in and sign in with staff/student number and password.
Once signed in, you should see the following:
Click on the Teams icon.
You should see something similar to the screen below.
Click Join or Create a Team (1)
Click Create Team (2)
Choose the type of team you want to create, i.e., Class:
Name the team (1), give a Description (2) and click Next (3):
The Team is created and needs populated. The best way to do this is by staff/student number as there may be several people with the same names on our system.
In Search for Students (1), type in a student number and select the student’s name (2), click Add (3) and when the full list of students are added, click on Close (4).
Once the Team is set up, students will receive a notification via email they have been added to a team.
Teams allows you and other team members to:
- Create Posts
- Add Files
- View Class Notebooks (students can only see their own work)
- Create Assignments
- Track Grades
The + on the top bar allows the adding of additional tabs (all team members can view):
Team Features
At the bottom of the Teams window is a number of icons:
From left to right, they allow:
- Formatting
- Attachments
- Emojis
- Stickers
- Meetings (similar to skype with face-to-face, audio or chat features)
- Stream
- Praise
The … on the right allows more Apps to be added.
In active meetings 
Facilities include:
A counter
Webcam on/off
Microphone on/off
Share screen
Allows display of device settings, meeting notes, full screen, blur background, captions on/off, keypad, start recording and turn off incoming video
Chat window
Participants can be invited
Meeting ended
If meetings are recorded, they can be viewed later in Teams or shared (on email or embed code) via Stream.
Once you start an active meeting, this can be recorded. The recording will remain available within the team or it can be sent to Stream and shared elsewhere within the organisation. Do check the permissions, etc.
Team ‘meetings’ are a nice way to engage with students in small groups and/or tutorials. Students can communicate with each other via chat and other options within the Team or students can set up their own Team spaces to collaborate in.
Resources
We hope you have found this tutorial on Microsoft Teams helpful. Please share this blog with other academics for distance teaching.
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