Microsoft Teams: Recent Changes
There have long been concerns about students being able to have private chats/video calls with other students through Microsoft Teams. To address these, the district worked with Microsoft to disable all calling for students in Teams. They can still chat with each other. Their chats are all logged; feel free to remind them of this.
Because calling is disabled for students, the workflow will be a little different when you need to work with a student one-on-one. We will have to use the Meeting feature instead. There is a video of this process here: https://youtu.be/O1rA9hfwjHI
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If regular calling is disabled for students in Microsoft Teams, you can still have a private meeting with them by following this process.
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Basically, instead of going to Calls and starting a video or audio call, as I have shown you previously, you will instead need to go to Calendar and then click Meet Now. Then just search for the student to invite them to the meeting.
Here is the workflow I would recommend if you are trying to work with an individual student (during your office hours, for example):
- Start in the chat. The student can initiate a chat with you. Part of your online classroom management should be that students reach out to you for help via chat first, and the expectation is that they will be detailed in their help request.
- You may be able to answer their question in the chat and they can get back to their work.
- If you need to talk to them (audio and/or video), click on your Calendar. Click Meet Now. Click Join to start the meeting. Type their name in and they will get a call. You have to initiate the meeting, because they do not have the permissions in Teams to do this.
- They will need to accept the call to join the meeting.
It sounds a little more complicated than it is. You can practice this with your teammates – chat with each other, then one of you go over to calendar and do a Meet Now and invite the other. It’s very simple once you get the hang of it.
