Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Microsoft
1975
Redmond, WA
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
270,000+ educ. orgs
Cloud
Yes
Microsoft Teams At A Glance
Product Overview
Microsoft Teams is part of the Office 365 for Education product suite that enables teachers to deliver online learning to their students. Teachers can set up virtual classrooms and create, send, track and grade assignments and tests. Students can complete their work, access their grades and engage in conversations.
Microsoft Teams integrates with other Office apps (e.g., Word, OneNote, PowerPoint) and third-party software (e.g., Flipgrid, Turnitin, MakeCode), so students and teachers won’t need to use multiple solutions.
The software has additional benefits, including:
- Multimedia content sharing (e.g., videos, documents, images)
- Unlimited personal cloud storage
- Free account that supports an unlimited number of users
Microsoft Teams allows teachers to host virtual classes. They can schedule classes, send invites to students and record classes so students can access them later. Students can decide whether to appear on video during classes and mute or unmute themselves. They can also send chats to the teacher or other students.
Features
Users can create their own teams for specific needs (e.g., class, student activity, educator collaboration). Each team has its own activity feeds, channels, chats, files and more. Plus, users can create multiple channels in each team, and each channel has conversations where users can reply to a thread.
Each team also has dedicated tabs for Class Notebooks, Assignments and Grades.
Class Notebooks – The Class Notebooks is a digital binder stored into OneNote that teachers can use to create lesson plans. Each student has their own private notebooks for essays and other content, and students can allow teachers to provide real-time feedback within their notebooks.
Assignments – Teachers can create and edit assignments in the Assignments tab. They can also add content from other Office apps, create a grading rubric, edit due dates and customize the assignments to individual students. Students can view their grades and upcoming assignments for all of their classes, as well as send back completed work.
Grades – The Grades tab gives teachers at-a-glance access to all of their assignments in order to track progress. The feedback loop feature lets teachers edit assignments, grade assignments, leave comments and more. Teachers can also export grades to Excel for further analysis.
Other features – Microsoft Teams includes AI-powered digital learning coaches to provide additional support to students: Reading Progress (helps build students’ reading skills), Presenter Coach (improves public speaking) and Career Coach (helps teachers grow their professional skills). Teachers can also track their students’ learning progress with the Educational Insight feature.
In addition to learning, the software includes features to help students’ well-being: Reflect (checks students’ emotional states), Feelings Monster (represents various feelings of students) and Kahoot! (social-emotional learning games).
Finally, Microsoft Teams offers two features that make learning more inclusive for students: Immersive Reader (students can access ASL, text decoding and other accessibility features) and OneNote Live Captions (lessons is translated into student’s language of choice).
Target Market
Microsoft Office 365 for Education targets K-12 schools and colleges/universities. We’ve listed 10 schools that use its products, including Teams, below.
- Blue Springs School District (MO)
- Carroll County Public Schools (MD)
- DeVry University
- Edmonton Catholic School District (Canada)
- George Washington University
- Quest Academy (IL)
- Rutherford County School District (TN)
- Teesside University
- University of New South Wales Sydney
- University of Texas at Arlington
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Implementation/Integration
Students and teachers can sign up for Microsoft Teams using their school email address. Microsoft offers a quick start guide and training videos. It also has one-hour online classes for teachers via the Microsoft Educator Center.
Customer Service & Support
Users can browse resources in the Microsoft Teams help center and access the community forums to connect with other users. Admins can contact Microsoft directly via chat or email for additional support.
Pricing
Microsoft Teams is one of the products offered under Office 365 for Education, which has three pricing plans.
- Office 365 A1 – This plan includes Office apps like Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint and School Data Sync.
- Office 365 A3 – This plan has all of the features of the A1 plan, plus Access and Publisher (on PC only), the ability to install the Office desktop apps on up to five PCs/Macs per user and the ability to install the Office apps on up to five tablets/phones per user.
- Office 365 A5 – This plan has all of the features of the A3 plan, plus intelligent security management, advanced compliance and analytics functionality.
Pricing is no longer publicly available, so institutions will need to contact Microsoft for a custom price quote.
How Much Does LMS Software Cost?
Download our free report to compare pricing on 27 of the most popular LMS Solutions including Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas, and Edmodo.Download NowShortcomings
Microsoft Teams doesn’t have LMS features for corporate training. Organizations that are looking for a dedicated LMS can check out our other reviews.
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About
Founded by Bill Gates and Steve Allen and based in Redmond, WA, Microsoft does business around the globe developing, supporting and selling software, software services, computers and various other electronics.
Its mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more by reinventing productivity and business processes, building an intelligent cloud platform and creating more technology for personal computing.
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