Create a Team for your class in minutes

Owned by Sean Stockburger (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 07, 2020
4 min read

Microsoft Teams is a group chat and collaboration platform that includes online meeting and video conferencing capability. You do not need to create a Team in order to host an online meeting/video conference in Teams, but creating a team that includes all of your students has some advantages:

  • A team provides a place for you and your students to chat and collaborate in between online meetings. Your team can have different “channels” dedicated to specific topics, assignments, or subgroups of students. Each channel hosts shared files and allows participants to communicate via text or even quickly meet online using voice, video, and screen-sharing.

  • When you choose the “Meet Now” option in a Team channel, only team members can join that meeting. It’s completely private. There is no need to create an invitation, share a meeting ID, a password, and no need to require attendees to wait in a virtual lobby until they are admitted. When its time for class, each student can simply go to the Team’s general channel (or any channel where a meeting is being hosted) and click the Join Meeting button.

How to create a Team in just a few minutes

If you do not already have the Teams app:

  1. Browse to https://mywestern.wwu.edu and click the Office 365 icon at the top.

  2. Sign into Office 365 with your username@wwu.edu if prompted, and click on the Teams tile. If you do not see it, click on the option to show All Apps.

     

  3. This will open Teams in a Web browser, but it will also prompt you to install the app.

Create a Team:

  1. Select Teams on the navigation bar. Click the button to Join or Create a Team, and then the Create Team button.

  2. Select Class as the team type.

  3. Give your team a descriptive name. You might want to include the course number, quarter, and section unless you want to create one team for all sections. Click NEXT.

  4. Add your students using a security group. Each course and section has a corresponding security group for the current quarter. This group is based on the current quarter only, so keep that in mind if you are creating a Team for a future quarter. If you need assistance finding the security group for your course and section, submit a request.

     

  5. After you add your students, click the Teachers tab to search for and add additional instructors or teaching assistants by name. After you have added your students and teachers, click the Close button. All team members will be notified via Teams and email that they have been added to your new team. If they have not used Teams before, the email invitation will help them get started. Students can also access Teams from Office 365 using the same steps described at the top of this page.

     

That’s all there is to creating your team! You will be taken to your new team and presented with links to add course materials (which you do not need to use if you are already using Canvas) and Teams training articles.

You can create additional channels, or modify Teams settings, by clicking the ellipsis next to your Team name.

Start a text conversation in any channel, or start an online meeting by clicking the Meet Now button:

Team members will see a video camera icon next to the channel name when a meeting is in progress. To join they simply select the channel and click the Join Meeting button.

 You can also schedule a meeting in Teams and add the scheduled meeting to a channel.

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