Challenges

• Engaging students in dialogue and discussion around a reading can be problematic.
• Creating individual accountability within group tasks and maintaining a balanced group can be difficult.
• Multiple documents with students trying to consolidate learning at the end of a task can be troublesome and messy.

Solution

1. Separate students into groups of 5-8. The groups could be set up in breakout rooms on Microsoft Teams in advance.

2. Ensure the documents you will be using are accessible.

3. Provide the groups with the documents, this could be the same document for all groups, or different documents per group.

4. Students can then view, collaborate on and discuss the document synchronously or asynchronously using the collaborative features in Microsoft Teams.

Notes

• Oversight by the academic is ongoing across all groups and occasional input and assistance can be given at any point required
• Students will be able to @mention each other within the document to prompt their engagement/response when required.
• Within Word the ‘Read Aloud’ & ‘Translate’ tools can be useful inclusive tools to support individuals who prefer to have to text in an audio format & in their first language.

Who was involved?

Jenny Roberts: Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, convenor for ENGR311 Engineering Management (core 3^rd year engineering module across all disciplines)

Dale Munday: Teams guru, advisor and general legend throughout the development of the site

Students: 169 x 3^rd year students (all engineering disciplines plus a couple of natural science students)

What did you do?

Due to the rapid transition to online delivery of all modules in Michaelmas term 2020, I set out to develop a Microsoft Teams site that was as engaging as possible and incorporated all lecture material, but also acted as a platform for delivery of 3 experiential workshops.

Utilising a layered approach, I created weekly channels that housed all of the lecture or workshop material for that week. The content for each lecture was embedded in separate SharePoint files, which were then imported as content tabs for each week. Similarly, various other applications were used for the workshops and inserted as content tabs. This allowed all the material to be displayed in one place and in a format that was both accessible and engaging.

ENGR311 Teams site: Week 4 integrated SharePoint page for lectures on Controlling

How did you do it?

I used a number of applications to help enhance my Teams site, including SharePoint, Wakelet and Flipgrid:

SharePoint was pivotal to the way lecture material within this module was presented and allowed for lecture recordings, lecture slides, exercises, reading material, quizzes and feedback forms to be included all in one place. The ease of setting up the SharePoint pages for each lecture topic largely negates the additional time spent to achieve a much more engaging learning environment. Fully integrated with the Microsoft Office suite and with the ability to embed pretty much anything, I could easily add in supporting material for quick reference in between lecture recordings, add in an exercise to put into practice the theory, or include a quick quiz for students to formatively assess their understanding of the material covered. All of this material can equally be presented in Moodle, however rather than opening up numerous tabs in the browser, or downloading multiple documents, in Teams students could access the equivalent embedded material via the integrated SharePoint page and interact with everything in a single window.

The first of three experiential workshops made use of two integrated applications in particular: Wakelet and Flipgrid. Students were required to research a case study assigned to their group of six, make links with relevant legislation and then create a 5-minute summary video of their findings that would then be added to a resource bank of all videos for peer-to-peer review and subsequent reflection. Wakelet was used to present the list of groups, their case study title and a link to an initial article. Flipgrid allowed the students to record their video via their laptop, computer or mobile, then upload it to be included in the resource bank. All students within the Teams group could then view all of the videos and comment on key themes or links between case studies. As with the SharePoint pages, both applications were simply added as tabs in the channel for the first workshop making them highly accessible.

Flipgrid tab within workshop 1

Why did you do it?

Engineering Management can be delivered in a transmissive manner, but makes for a rather dry subject with little opportunity for students to really appreciate the responsibility and trust that professional engineers are expected to uphold. I had therefore redesigned the module to include three experiential workshops prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and was looking at ways to deliver these workshops to a large cohort in what, at that point, was a challenging teaching environment; the Great Hall. Teams provided the perfect platform to ensure students could communicate with each other in a collaborative manner, even if they were sat on opposite sides of a large lecture hall, or indeed in a separate building, town or even country. Not only could students chat via messaging or video calls, they could also work on collaborative OneNote documents within the Teams space and access all of the necessary resources for the workshops. Therefore, a very versatile platform that enabled a rich learning experience exclusive of the physical location the students were in.

When it was confirmed that teaching would be delivered online in Michaelmas 2020, it became apparent that I could endeavour to enhance the engagement levels throughout the module, not just the workshops, and explore how Teams could be exploited further for this purpose.

Does it work?

The concise answer is, yes, I believe so. With an average overall increase in the end of module feedback mark from last year of 11%, I believe the development of the Teams platform has been a real enabler in enhancing engagement. Positive feedback from the students included:

‘The workshops in particular were fantastic. Despite being online, the module was really well taught. The integration with Teams was particularly well-executed.’

‘The workshops were amazingly done and made breakout rooms bearable’

‘I liked how interactive the module was. Also thought the workshops and coursework were well organised. I have to say even with the teaching being online, I felt it was one of the best engaging and organised modules.'

In person delivery without doubt has its advantages however if the capability that Teams has to offer can be effectively harnessed, then an engaging alternative can be provided that may even rival in person delivery in certain situations (such as large cohort group work).

• Customise view with default, dark mode, and high contrast options to suit individual preferences.
• Live captions on meetings.
• Screen reader navigation compatibility.
• Translation in text-based communication.
• Immersive reader for text-based chat allowing for further personalisation.

For more information see Microsoft's accessibility support site for Teams.