Microsoft Teams is connected with your Brightspace course through the so called Microsoft Teams Course connector. This is an integrated connection that will create a Team within Microsoft Teams, corresponding with your Brightspace course. Next to creating a Team, the connector also adds the instructors and students.
How do I create a Team for my course?
Please note that users that are not known in Leiden University's O365 directory cannot create a Team in a course. You can check this, based on the extension of your work e-mail address. Please see here for more information.
A Team is not created by default for your course. As an instructor you can decide for yourself if a Team is useful/necessary for your course. Teams can be created from the Microsoft Teams widget on the Course Home page. The widget is visible at the bottom of your Course Home and appears like this:
- Click on Create Course Team
You can decide if students should have the right to create private channels. Select your preference and click on Create Course Team.
- Select your preference and click on Create Course Team
- Your Team is being created. This may take a few minutes.
- Click on 'Open Your Team' to go to the corresponding Team.
- Under 'Edit Settings' the right for team members to create private channels can be adjusted.
Creating a Team for each section within the course.
When your course has sections, it is possible to create a Team for each section within your course. If you have not created a Team for you course yet, you can create a Team for each section of your course at the same time when creating a Team for the course. When creating the Team simply check the box "Create a Team for each section.".
If you have already created a Team for the course and then later decide to also create Teams for each section within the course, you need to go back to the Microsoft Teams widget on the Course Home page. The widget is visible at the bottom of your Course Home and appears like this:
You can click on the Edit Settings button where you will find the option to create a Team for each section.
Please note that each Team always needs to have an instructor enrolled in it. If there are no instructors enrolled in the individual sections then the instructor members from the primary team will be retrieved. If the instructor later adjusts the section membership to include a member with instructor role, the next synchronization will adjust the related Team memberships.
What role is assigned to which user within the Team?
When creating the Team, the users on the classlist in Brightspace will be automatically added to the Team. The role of the user within the Brightspace course, determines the role of the user within the Team. Please refer to the table below to see who gets what role. Other Brightspace users with different roles that are not mentioned in the table below, will not be added to the Team.
| Brightspace Role | MS Teams Role |
|---|---|
| Instructor | Owner |
| Assistant Instructor | Owner |
| Tutor | Member |
| Grader | Member |
| Student | Member |
Each Team created by Brightspace contains 1 additional owner called 'Brightspace-MSTeams'. This is the account used by the link to manage the Team. This owner may not be deleted.
Please note that when student assistants are added in a Brightspace course with a guest account, their permissions in a linked MS Teams environment are limited. When instructors adjust the permissions of a student assistant, it will be synced back to Brightspace after an hour and the permissions will disappear again.
Check the standard permissions of students within a Team
Within Teams, there are different type of teams. The type of team that is created by the Course Connector is a 'Standard Team'. Within a standard team, members have quite a few rights. For instance they are able to add other members, make (private) channels and add other applications to the Team.
For most educational uses of Teams, it is not preferable for students to have so many rights. We therefore strongly recommend to check the permissions of your Team and set them to your preferred settings.
Member permissions and other settings can be found under the tab Settings, through the Manage Team menu. See the screens below.
- Click on the three dots next to your Team's name.
- Click on Manage team.
- Click on Settings.
- Select or deselect the member permissions you want to use.