Dan, Qaixen Consultant, discusses the ways schools can unlock the potential of Microsoft Teams Assignments to improve teaching and learning in his latest blog:
Get to know your toolkit
In my experience, schools often don’t realise the potential of the tools that they have available to them, even if a large proportion of the budget has been spent on the software already. Through no fault of their own, typically due to lack of time, poor training or staff changes, schools will often be completely oblivious to the fact that they have access to very powerful online resources.
Teams in Education
For example, Teams in Education. I will hold my hand up to being one of those completely oblivious people, although this was through no fault of my own. I had simply not been taught the skills necessary to get the most out of using Microsoft Teams and more specifically the Assignments app, which if I had known more about, it would have saved me a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I knew it was there, I vaguely knew what it did.
Introducing Microsoft Teams Assignments
If it hadn’t been for the right people giving me the support to implement the app, it would have remained in a dusty corner of the Teams side bar, only to be occasionally clicked accidently by a staff member who was actually looking how to find an important document they’d deleted last Thursday afternoon. The use of Assignments within education has been instrumental in improving blended learning within schools. Many schools are familiar with the meeting and communication tools within Microsoft Teams but less so with the Assignments app.
What are the benefits of Microsoft Teams Assignments?
By setting up pupils with assignments (ask your IT administrator or technician to do this) you can assign, collect and assess work sent to students using these tools. Why however, is this more beneficial over some of the already available services for online learning such as SeeSaw or 360 Learning?
One of the major benefits to using Assignments in Teams is that schools will have it available to them if they are already using Microsoft Teams and will just need to activate it within their tenant. Therefore, this means that it there is no additional cost or subscription to a new platform. It is just ready to use. Another benefit is that most staff and students should (although there is always that one person) now be familiar with the Teams Platform. This means that there is a very shallow learning curve to training both pupils and teachers alike. In real terms it means time is saved, which is a commodity that many teachers and support staff just do not have.
How does Assignments save time?
Assignments allows you to manage your students, set them work or tasks and then assess it with the familiar collaborative tools Microsoft Teams gives you access to. By creating a Class Team, you can ensure that all students within that Team are set work appropriate to them. This can be differentiated by selecting the pupils you wish to assign certain tasks to. Templates, using the Microsoft 365 Apps, can be created then uploaded or linked to an assignment. This means that students can be modelled to effectively and format their work accordingly. In addition to this, you can manage both formative and summative assessments by either giving feedback directly to the pupil or by using a grading matrix. Now, I will admit that the grading matrix is clearly aimed at an older, more international audience, but like with most things within Teams, it is optional. It also could be argued that on other education platforms, such as SeeSaw, you can also give good feedback. However, this often must be done after the work has been submitted rather than when task being worked on. By using Assignments, feedback can be given live, in real time, in the knowledge that it will be acted on instantly as the pupil will be aware that you can access the pupil’s work at any time.
How does this work in practice?
During my many years of experience as an IT lead in the education sector, I would often use Assignments to augment my lessons, so that the children I was working with could achieve their best learning. The pupils would love it when I would give them live feedback whilst completing a task, I had set them. I would often watch their faces (they weren’t aware of the collaborative tools available on Teams) as I interacted with their task or explained to them that what they were typing probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing to be writing during school hours.
Completing tasks in this way also allows you to keep track of pupils’ work and feedback to them instantly. Therefore, giving staff more control over what their students are doing with their time, which can only be a good thing. This also has e-safety implications too.
How Assignments helps with home learning
Although one use of assignments can be for home learning. I found that using it in the classroom with me as the teacher provided the children with a safe space to ask questions and know that help was only a mouse click away. This meant that during class Computing lessons children knew they couldn’t hide what they were doing from me and promoted a more open and safer environment. Finally, Teams Assignments gave students who didn’t enjoy verbal feedback a voice in which they could express their thoughts and feelings directly to me. Just because a learner is silent most of the time doesn’t mean they don’t want to be heard.
My final thoughts on Assignments are that they are a wonderful tool to encourage, inspire and motivate students to the best of their ability. Even if you are not a confident user of any of the Microsoft 365 apps, simply give Assignments a go with a small group of pupils and grow your own knowledge from there. They may even know a thing or two about it already.
Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams Assignments?
Here at Qaixen, we offer a range of consultancy services as well as a set bespoke Microsoft 365 training courses for teachers to help drive adoption and increase understanding of all the cloud tools, including Assignments, Power Pages, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. If you would like to learn more about how Qaixen can help your school, college or university with Microsoft Teams Assignments or any other Microsoft 365 application, simply contact us.