Teams will be part of our supported digital learning environment in 21/22. Teams offers tools for collaboration, discussion, teamwork and community building and will complement Blackboard. Blackboard remains the appropriate location for teaching materials, reading lists, learning activities, assessment activities and assessment-related information and data.

Through interviews, a short survey,focus group and our new project advisory group DEO and IT Services are establishing requirements for Teams in 21/22 and future years.

For 21/22 the project aims to create Teams:

• for each taught unit, with students added from SITS. The spaces will be unavailable to students by default, with the option for Team owners to make them available.

• with teaching staff added. Team owners will be able to add additional UoB staff as owners and guest users external to the University.
• with a simple integration between Blackboard and Teams. We will work with schools to ensure this link aligns with their plans for Blackboard template and course development.

We are working with an advisory group made of of academic and professional services staff, to prioritise and deliver these requirements for Teaching Block 1, while also collating additional requirements to continue to develop and extend Teams for teaching. Examples of requests for longer-term development include functionality to:

• enable staff to include students in addition to those enrolled from SITS (eg for co-taught units).
• automatically create Teams for Programmes(for example for year group or all years on a programme).
• better support activity groups (e.g. for a tutor group or other teaching activity).

As part of the project we will develop training and support materials for staff and students, as well as case studies and exemplars.

For further information, please see our project page  or email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.