Microsoft Teams: Communicate, Collaborate, Create

Author:  Chris Melia, TELT

Most importantly for our staff, it’s really about helping them to inspire our students to become a modern workforce of the future, in a sense that they are truly digitally enabled.”

James Crooks, Director of Learning and Information Services

In my last post on this blog I looked at the how and why we have introduced Microsoft Teams at our institution, as well as some early student feedback from a pilot learner community.

Since then our collective use of Teams across services and faculties has only grown, with even more clear benefits coming to fruition.

To celebrate a year since our initial adoption of Teams, we decided to start a series of video case studies to celebrate the fantastic ongoing practice and share more visual impact with our wider communities.

This first entry entitled; “Communicate , Collaborate, Create” identifies a number of key examples where Teams has been used to effectively manage people and projects, and also facilitated across faculty collaboration.

In my own role as a Faculty Learning Technologist, Teams has enabled conversations across the five Schools which would previously have proved difficult to facilitate.  As a digital learning community, the Teams area has provided a real output for our colleagues’ passion and enthusiasm for technology enabled learning.

In addition, it has encouraged them to engage with the Microsoft Educator Community (MEC) where they are now achieving Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) & MIE Expert status through earning various badges and sharing their innovative practice.

Staff feedback on this Teams community has been particularly positive:

“I feel that this platform has created a community where as a Faculty we can collaborate, share our ideas and support each other. It is incredibly inspiring to see what technologies our colleagues within the Faculty are utilising in their teaching.”

Kirstie Harrison, Lecturer (School of Nursing)

 “I find it really valuable as a way to share ideas and resources with colleagues and to seek support and inspiration when needed. It’s great to be able to put a call out and get ideas back and helps to strengthen our community of practice, which in turn will benefit our students. I am looking forward to using Teams to help build communities with our students in the new academic year.”

Hazel Partington, Senior Lecturer (School of Community Health & Midwifery)

“It’s been great to have a network for sharing ideas and skills. Hopefully I will be able to develop my skills and incorporate new digital approaches into teaching.”

Debbie Brown, Principal Lecturer (School of Social Work, Care & Community)

“It’s very supportive – I can feel part of a community when working out and about and have learnt new skills!”

Samantha Pywell, Practice Learning Support Tutor (Faculty of Health and Wellbeing)

“The community site is collaborative, accessible and informative. I have found it such a useful platform on which to share ideas and take inspiration from other colleagues. The support is fantastic and will definitely benefit both staff and students!”

Andy Sprake, Lecturer (School of Sport and Wellbeing)

At the University of Central Lancashire we are particularly looking forward to another exciting year of future developments in Microsoft Teams, as well as the wider capabilities of Office 365.

Why not follow our journey each step of the way via our Twitter handles: @ChrisLearnTech @UCLanTELT