Weekly Canvas Tip #5: Microsoft Teams and Canvas
Canvas features the ability for students and instructors to join or create classroom teams and to join or create secure, online meetings in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams can complement a Canvas Course by providing additional asynchronous opportunities for document collaboration, file sharing, 1-1 or large group discussions, OneNote Class Notebook assignments, focused project work, and more.
About Microsoft Teams
Teams is a desktop, mobile, and web-based communication and collaboration platform for Office 365 that brings everything together into a shared workspace where you can chat, meet, share files, and work with other applications and services. Teams offers group chat, online meeting and web conferencing, audio and video calling, collaboration with built-in Office 365 applications, and OneDrive access.
Sync your Canvas Course with a Microsoft Team
As an instructor, you must sync your Canvas roster with Microsoft Teams before use. Once it is synchronized, any time people are added or removed from a Canvas course, they will be automatically added or removed from the team in Microsoft Teams within 90 minutes.
Using Microsoft Teams with Your Canvas Course
To use Microsoft Teams with your Canvas course (once it has been synced):
1. Go to the home page of the Canvas course where you want to use Teams.
2. Click “Microsoft Teams classes” from the course navigation menu to launch the app.
3. A prompt will appear to activate the course.
4. Click “Activate” once you have the Team set up.
Joining and Creating Teams Meetings
- To create a Teams meeting as an instructor:
1. Go to the home page of the Canvas course where you want to use Teams.
2. Click “Microsoft Teams meetings” from the course navigation menu. This will show all Teams meetings scheduled for the course using the Teams meetings app.
3. Click the “New Meeting” button or the “Schedule a Meeting” link to create a Teams meeting for your course.
4. When you create a meeting, be sure to enter a meeting title, description, date, and time. Type the names of the attendees for the meeting or click “Add Entire Class” to add everyone into the meeting roster all at once.
5. When you are finished, click “Save.” The meeting will appear on your Outlook calendar, calendar within Teams, and the Outlook calendars of your attendees.
Note: When people are added or removed from a Canvas Course, they are not automatically added or removed from existing meetings, including recurring meetings. Instructors need to do this manually.
Editing Teams Meeting Options
You can edit meeting options of a Microsoft Teams meeting within Canvas to change:
- who can bypass the lobby
- if entrants are announced, and who can present;
- if meetings are automatically recorded,
- if chat, reactions, the microphone, and the camera are active
To edit the meeting options, click the ellipsis (…) next to the Microsoft Teams meeting.
Further Assistance