By Dr Malcolm Murray
Head of Digital Learning
As October drew to a close, I headed down to Keele University to the 2019 Keele Digital Festival. This was organised by Keele University’s Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence – KIITE (similar to DCAD at Durham) in conjunction with Jisc. The focus of the day was how Microsoft Teams could be used in learning and teaching. I hoped it would be relevant to Durham given CIS’s current roll-out of Office365 (which includes Teams). Teams is an interesting tool because unlike VLEs which are designed around content, content pre-selected by lecturers and released only to students enrolled on a course, Teams is primarily about communication (noting that this involves creating, co-creating and sharing content).
The “festival” was tent-free, with not an ageing band in sight. Instead it took the more traditional form of presentations from institutions that had rolled out Teams, interspersed with prompts for discussion by Jisc’s Lawrie Phipps (his thinking about Teams is well worth a read). Familiar faces from Microsoft were there too, but their presence was very low-key, it was clear they were there to listen.
One institution had decided to dispense with a VLE altogether and just teach using Teams, but most people were using them together and trying to work out the affordances of each. In truth the last thing the world needs is another VLE, but I am very interested in tools that help people to think and work together. The presenters – all early adopters – were all passionate about Teams and showed very positive feedback from their students. We have to be careful though of the self-selecting nature of the event – perhaps those who tried Teams and it didn’t work for them, gave up and moved on and so wouldn’t attend a festival like this. A common observation by lecturers was that the product gave them more pedagogical freedom to teach, as they made good use of the ever-growing array of plug-ins (e.g. Flipgrid, Planner, Polly and Whiteboard) and content that can be accessed and interacted with on a wide range of devices. No-one really talked about the potential downside – lots of uniquely structured sites (Teams) for each course. Doesn’t this risk making learning more confusing for some students? Or can this be overcome by the great search tools built into Teams (Blackboard take note).
Want to know more?
- Find out more about Office365 at Durham
- Ask someone in CIS about Teams and when it is coming to you
- Recordings of the Keele Festival presentations
- A great review of the presentations by Marieke Guy.
Photo by Liudmyla Denysiuk on Unsplash