Teaching: You now have more opportunities to collaborate with your students

As a teacher, you now have another digital tool in your toolbox. From today, 7 May, students have full access to the Microsoft 365 package, including Teams, which you can use to facilitate collaborative activities on your courses.

Teachers and students have long requested better opportunities for digital collaboration.

As a teacher, it’s completely up to you whether and how you want to use Microsoft 365 in your teaching. You may wish to use it to facilitate project work or the students’ collaborative tasks.

Students can also take the initiative to use Microsoft 365 to communicate with each other or external partners, such as internship host organisations.

Where to get help and guidance

To get started with M365, you can make use of the many ways to get help and guidance from the Centre for Educational Development (CED):

• Workshops at CED: Find introductory material on the educational and practical possibilities of using Teams and other Microsoft 365 tools in your teaching. See the list of workshops

• Support to use the new tools in your teaching: You can call or email CED’s support team with your questions about how to use the new tools in your teaching. Read more here.

• Teaching guides on AU Educate: Find guides on how to use the individual tools in your teaching. Find them here.

• Order a team: You can order a Teams team for your class and link to it from Brightspace. Fill in this form to order a Team.
• Technical guides: Find technical guides for the different Microsoft 365 tools – Read more here

How to use Brightspace and Teams

Although students now have access to Teams, please continue to use Brightspace in the same way you currently do. It is still in Brightspace that you should create learning spaces with your course syllabus, slides and other teaching material.

You should also continue to use Brightspace for your daily communication about the course with students. We recommend that you make it clear at the start of the semester how you will use Teams and how you will use Brightspace in your course – so that the students are informed from the outset. 

• You can read more about Brightspace and Microsoft 365 on this information page.

How students are being informed

• Students will receive targeted information about Microsoft 365 and Teams in their AU inbox and on studerende.au.dk after the summer holidays and before the start of the semester.

• They can also find information on how to use the tools on the Microsoft 365 information webpage.

Students now have a new email system

As part of the students’ access to Microsoft 365 tools, their email system has been moved to Microsoft Exchange (Outlook). This will result in a more secure email system for the students as is also a condition of them gaining access to the Microsoft 365 package. – Read more in this article.

Are you an administrative employee?

If you work in the studies administration, you can read more about how to use Teams and the other M365-tools when you communicate with students on the Microsoft 365 information webpage (under the section Guidelines for communicating with students in Brightspace and M365). For an overview of how to use AU's communication platforms aimed at students, see Kommunikation med de studerende (in Danish only).