As staff prepare to switch from Zoom (which expires from Wednesday, 12th March 2025) to Teams meetings, we have been extensively testing common use cases and workflows to deliver and host online teaching activities using Microsoft Teams Meeting via the Microsoft integration options in Blackboard .
The testing of Microsoft integrations within Blackboard revealed a number of shortcomings particularly around meeting options and permissions – essential for meeting organisers/instructors.
This guidance aims to share key insights and recommends an alternative workflow to help staff organise and host online meetings for teaching.
What options did we test?
The following Microsoft integrations within Blackboard were tested:
- Microsoft Teams classes, which creates a Microsoft Class Teams site linked and synchronised to a Blackboard module
- Microsoft Teams meetings, which allows users schedule online meetings directly from the Blackboard interface
Key Findings
Although, both options afford the creation of online meetings, based on our testing, we discovered a number of limitations and potential risks using the integration for online meetings.
Here’s a quick summary of key findings:
- Microsoft Class Teams site (integration)
- An additional platform to manage: This option requires the module lead to activate and manage an entirely new Class Teams site. It is a powerful extension to your Blackboard module, especially if you require a dedicated platform to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous collaborative activities, share files, and conversations with your students. However, this set up might be excessive if the use case is only to host online meetings.
- Invites everyone: More importantly, by default, meeting invites and notifications are sent out to everyone enrolled in the module which can overload people’s calendar and cause confusion amongst other academics and L&T staff enrolled in the module.
- Microsoft Teams meetings (integration)
- Invites everyone: The integration allow students to schedule meetings and invite the ‘entire class’ (i.e. everyone enrolled in the module including other academics and L&T staff), which can cause confusion and chaos!
- No oversight: If not named as an invitee, module lead does not have oversight of meetings scheduled in the module.
- Change meeting option after invite: Meeting options are only available once the meeting is scheduled.
Recommended Workflow
As an outcome of our testing, we recommend that staff instead opt for scheduling Microsoft Teams meetings via the Teams Calendar as this gives you more control.
Scheduling your meeting via your personal Teams Calendar offers you greater flexibility and control.
- You can schedule a meeting without adding attendees/students.
- Once scheduled, you can simply copy the meeting link and share the details with your students in your Blackboard module (i.e. by adding the details to a Blackboard Document, creating a Blackboard Calendar item, sharing via Announcement etc.).
- This works for both small and large cohorts.
It’s important to note that not all Teams meetings are the same. Different types of meeting options (or Templates under New Meetings in Teams Calendar) offer different set up features and controls depending on your use case.
Find out more about Class and Lecture templates for Teams meetings on the Microsoft support site.
Best Practice Tips
Here are some best practice tips and recommendations you may want to consider when using your personal Teams Calendar to schedule Microsoft Teams meetings for teaching.
- Do not reuse the same meeting link for all sessions.
This can cause issues with attendance list, compromise session recordings and pose security risks. If sessions need to be repeated at regular intervals i.e. drop ins, office hours, schedule the meeting as recurring. - Remember to amend Teams ‘Meeting Options‘.
The default meeting settings award attendees full control – they are set as Presenters, enabling them to share, annotate, remove and mute other participants, start/stop recording etc. As a meeting organiser you will need to amend the ‘Meeting options’ on a meeting-by-meeting basis, applying settings that suit the need of your session. Here are some useful settings that you may want to consider:- To restrict students from starting/stopping session recording: Change the attendees role under the ‘Meeting Options’ (Roles > Who can present, change from ‘Everyone’ to ‘Organizer & Co-organizers’).
- To restrict or allow attendee bypass lobby:
- If you are delivering a session that includes externals, you may want to set the ‘Who can bypass the lobby’ option to ‘People in my org and guests’. This will require people in the session to admit attendees waiting in the lobby.
- For sessions with Durham attendees only, select ‘People in my org’. This minimises disruption and forces attendees to sign-in using their university account, avoiding the need for staff/organiser to admit individual attendees into the session (particularly useful for large cohorts). It also allows you to easily identify your attendees.
- If you are delivering a session that includes externals, you may want to set the ‘Who can bypass the lobby’ option to ‘People in my org and guests’. This will require people in the session to admit attendees waiting in the lobby.
- To restrict students from starting/stopping session recording: Change the attendees role under the ‘Meeting Options’ (Roles > Who can present, change from ‘Everyone’ to ‘Organizer & Co-organizers’).
- Map your recording with Panopto integration.
When enabled, the integration allows users to automatically create a copy of session recordings to a designated Panopto folder. For example, you can automatically save recordings of your lecture series in the module’s Panopto folder and easily share it with your students. For details see the guide on Automatically store Microsoft Teams recordings in Panopto.
- Add named co-organisers
Invite and assign co-organisers in advance of the session. This would be particularly useful if sessions are organised by administrative staff or team teaching scenarios.
- Invite externals and guests
Send invites to named externals and guests.
Help & Support
If you have any technical queries or require support using Microsoft Teams meeting, please contact CIS Service desk via servicedesk@durham.ac.uk or reach out to the CIS Collaboration Team via the Zoom Queries form to raise any issues you anticipate with the transition from Zoom to Teams.