Create a Course Team, Add Students, and Set Up a Recurring Meeting

Last updated on January 19, 2023

Teaching online means creating a virtual space for your class. While Canvas fulfills the role of the classroom for asynchronous classes, it doesn’t support synchronous meetings. Microsoft Teams is available to the entire university to meet online, share content, and keep in touch when not in class. Teams has a robust set of features to facilitate your teaching, but the most important function is creating a Team and scheduling your meetings.

It is advisable to create a team for each section of each class that you teach, add your students to the team, and schedule your class meetings within it. This will make it easy for your students to find the meeting, participate in the discussion, and access any files that you share in the team, including meeting recordings.

Best Practices

Why should I use this?

• Set up a course team for any synchronous course that will be using Teams for class meetings. With an established team, students can access files shared with the entire course and make full use of the chat functions during the meeting.
• If you intend to offer virtual sessions in the event of a campus closure, set up a course team for your in-person course before the semester begins. This will make scheduling meetings less stressful when the need arises.

When should I set this up?

• You should set up a team for your online course well before classes begin. This is something you should look at doing around the time you get your Canvas shells for the upcoming semester.
• If adding students to the team directly, wait until shortly before classes begin, such as the weekend prior to the first class. This will ensure your roster is relatively finalized. You still might need to add students that register late.
• If adding students to the team by sharing a code, you can generate the code and put it into the course when you create the team, if you prefer.

What do I need to do when setting up a Team?

• Make sure to add all students to the team. If students join the meeting with a link you’ve provided but have not been added, they will have limited chat privileges and no access to course files, like recordings you might make of meetings.
• Don’t schedule meetings outside of the team. If you create a meeting by clicking on your calendar, make sure it’s assigned to the appropriate course team in the meeting options. 
• Do not reuse old teams in later semesters. It can be challenging to fully remove all information from previous students from the team, and sharing that information is a violation of FERPA.

Let’s walk through it together

Directions

Download and Install Microsoft Teams

Before setting up a recurring meeting, we recommend installing the app on your computer. Teams also has a browser version, but the app is more reliable for daily use. You can use our Download and Install MS Teams tutorial for help with this.

Create a Team for the Course

1. Click twice on the Teams icon in the left-hand navigation bar in the Teams window.
2. Click Join or create team in the top right-hand corner.
3. Click Create team in the top left-hand corner.
4. Click Class.
5. Enter a Name for your team.
   • This should identify the course, the section, and the semester; e.g. American National Government PSC1010-001 Fall 2022.
   • You can also enter a description below the Team Name, but this is entirely optional.
6. Click Next.
7. Click Skip when prompted to enter people to add to the team.
   • We will add students later.

Schedule a Recurring Meeting for the Class

1. Click twice on the Teams icon in the left-hand navigation bar in the Teams window.
2. Click the Class Team.
3. Click General under Channels in the left-hand menu.
4. Click the arrow to the right of the Meet button in the top right-hand corner.
5. Click Schedule a Meeting.
6. Enter a Title for the meeting, e.g. Class Meeting for TST-1010.
   • You do not need to enter any required or optional attendees.
7. Click the Start Date Box to open a calendar.
8. Select the Start Date for your class from the calendar.
9. Click the Start Time Box.
10. Select the Start Time for your meeting from the drop-down menu.
    • The drop-down menu has time’s in 30 minute increments. You can type in a custom time if you prefer.
11. Click the End Time Box.
    • You do not need to change the second date box as these settings are just for the first meeting. The “end of the course” will be set in a later step.
12. Select the Start Time for your meeting from the drop-down menu.
13. Click the Does Not Repeat drop-down menu.
14. Click Custom.
15. Click the Day drop-down menu.
16. Click Week.
17. Click the Days of the Week that your class meets on.
    • If your class meets at different times on different days, it is recommended that you created separate meetings.
18. Click the End Date box.
19. Select the Last Day of your course from the calendar.
20. Click Save in the bottom right-hand corner.
21. Click Send in the top right-hand corner of the page to save the meeting.

Add Students to the Class Team

Students can either add themselves to the Class Team via a code you can distribute or you can directly add them yourself.

Add Students by Distributing a Link

1. Click twice on the Teams icon in the left-hand navigation bar in the Teams window.
2. Click the Class Team.
3. Click the More Options (3 Dots) icon to the right of the Team Name in the top left-hand corner.
4. Click Get Link to Team.
5. Click Copy in the bottom right-hand corner of the pop-up menu.
   • This Team link can be shared with your students through whatever medium you wish. We recommend copying it into an Announcement in your Canvas course.

Add Students Directly

1. Click twice on the Teams icon in the left-hand navigation bar in the Teams window.
2. Click the Class Team.
3. Click the More Options (3 Dots) icon to the right of the Team Name in the top left-hand corner.
4. Click Add Member in the drop-down menu.
5. Enter the Student’s Email Address.
6. Click the Student’s Name in the dropdown menu.
   • You can enter more than one email address to add many students to the Team at once.
7. Click Add.

Share the Links for the Team and the Meeting in an Announcement

1. Click Calendar in the left-hand navigation bar.
2. Find the Meeting you scheduled.
3. Click on the Meeting in the calendar.
4. Hover the cursor over the Meeting Link beginning with https://teams.microsoft.com….
5. Click the Copy button to the right of the link.
   • This looks like two pieces of paper in a stack.
6. Open Canvas.
7. Select the Course that the meeting is for.
8. Click Announcements in the left-hand course navigation menu.
9. Click + Announcement in the top right-hand corner of the page.
10. Enter a Title for your announcement.
    • E.g. “Meeting Linking for Monday/Wednesday Classes”
11. Click the Link button in the toolbar of the textbox.
    • This looks like a few links of a chain.
12. Enter the Text that will appear for the link into the Text Field.
    • This can be something like “Click here to open the class meeting on Teams.” or you can simply paste the link here.
13. Paste the Meeting Link into the Link field.
14. Click Done in the bottom right-hand corner.