1 of 25

TEAMS & MOODLE

@moodlepete (Pete Roberts, TaLIC)

Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London

2 of 25

ABOUT TALIC

  • Support and manage �TEL platforms
  • Learn.gold (Moodle)�Panopto�Wooclap�Turnitin
  • Run a PG-Cert
  • Distance Learning
  • Help staff with tech & pedagogy,�eg: ABC design sessions

3 of 25

SOME TIME LAST MARCH…

​

TaLIC suddenly became very busy…

​

(I suspect you experienced something similar)

​

​

​

​

​

4 of 25

THE MAIN MESSAGE…

​

Don’t try to do online in real time what you normally do face to face

​

(unless you really have to)

​

​

​

​

5 of 25

‘FLEXIBLE LEARNING’

Moodle to the rescue?�

  • Asynchronous activities
  • Pre-recorded videos
  • Forum discussions
  • Quizzes

​

And have shorter real-time online sessions

​

​

6 of 25

OUR EXISTING ONLINE PLATFORMS

Moodle

Panopto

BigBlueButton

7 of 25

THE THING ABOUT BIGBLUEBUTTON…

  • It is a fabulous webinar tool
  • It’s NOT a video-conferencing system
  • Ideally keep the video streams below 200

​

  • 100 students and 1 presenter webcam = 100 streams
  • 20 students all sharing webcam (20x20) = 400 streams
  • 100 students all sharing webcams…. oops

​

​

​

​

8 of 25

I.T. HERE, HEY, WHY NOT USE TEAMS?

  • Part of the Office 365 subscription
  • Cloud hosted, scalable
  • It has a video-conferencing function – supports dozens of cameras, hundreds of participants
  • It will integrate with the VLE
  • Used in business – so a relevant digital skill for students

​

​

​

​

9 of 25

TEAMS 101

  • Participants - Team has Owners and Members
  • A Team contains Channels (like Moodle topics)
  • These Channels have ‘tabs’ that contain
    • Posts - synchronous chat that persists (useful)!
    • Files (O365 files can be collaboratively edited)
    • Meetings (with a presenter, chat area, webcams and breakout rooms)
    • ‘Apps’

​

​

​

10 of 25

EXAMPLE TEAM

11 of 25

CHANNELS

12 of 25

POSTS

13 of 25

TEAMS 102

  • Channels are public or private
  • With a public channel – all Team members can see the channel
  • With a private channel – membership can be restricted but functionality limited (eg: cannot schedule meetings)
  • Cannot change the channel type after creation

​

  • So not very granular compared with Moodle

​

​

​

14 of 25

CLASS TEAMS

  • OneNote class notebook
  • Assignment functionality (very limited)
  • Class resources area

​

​

​

15 of 25

SKOOLER INTEGRATION

  • Means to create Class Teams (from Templates)
  • One Team per Moodle course
  • Create one at a time or in bulk
  • Within the Team, can automatically create a channel per Topic or per Group in Moodle
  • ‘Overnight’ sync adds new students as Members, Editing Teachers as Team Owners (course level only)

​

​

​

​

16 of 25

SKOOLER INTEGRATION

Skooler

Moodle

Teams

17 of 25

THE ’MOODLE APP’ IN TEAMS

18 of 25

IF YOU JUST WANT MEETINGS…

  • Don’t need a Team – just need the Teams app
  • Create a one-off Office 365 calendar meeting, make it an online Teams meeting
  • Copy the meeting URL
  • Place it in the VLE and let the students know
  • (We use this for our daily drop-ins)

​

​

19 of 25

THE PROCESS

  • Consulted departments – they either opted for ‘meeting only’ or Team creation
  • TaLIC supplied IT&IS with CSVs of Moodle courses
  • IT&IS produced the Teams
  • TaLIC produced help guides for students and support for staff – workshops, guides, drop-ins

20 of 25

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

  • You don’t need a Team necessarily – may be fine with just a calendar meeting
  • Category-level access in Moodle ignored by Skooler
  • Software as a service is challenging – new Teams features are a bit random – break out rooms for example – guides out of date very quickly

​

  • Teams quite good for our team tho’ – we use it a lot

​

​

21 of 25

GOOD THINGS

  • Complemented Moodle nicely
  • Coped with large numbers of students in meetings
  • Students valued real-time interactions
  • Break out rooms really useful
  • Worked well with Wooclap
  • Real-time captioning and meeting recordings

​

​

​

​

​

​

22 of 25

STILL NOT QUITE THERE YET

  • Cannot share system audio on the Mac
  • No easy means to export chat from a meeting
  • Breakout room functionality still limited
  • Recordings of Teams meetings need to be downloaded and then uploaded to Panopto
  • Not really integrated into Moodle, say like BBB was
  • Something of a bandwidth hog
  • Confusing interface (largely as Teams does so much)

23 of 25

BREAKING NEWS…

​

  • It seems the integration is now called MConnect
  • Teams had a global outage on Tuesday!

​

24 of 25

SO ALL IN ALL...

​

  • Very useful addition to TEL offerings
  • Teams functionality great for small postgrad modules (depending on subject)
  • Meetings with breakout rooms good for large cohorts
  • It’s not a replacement for a VLE!

​

​

25 of 25

THANK YOU!

@moodlepete

Design Festival 2017