Microsoft Teams was introduced to the world in March of 2017, and in just three short years has become ubiquitous across the corporate world. By combining conversations, meetings, and file collaboration all in one app, Teams is the place that many business professionals spend the most time in every day.
The New Trend
Along the way, trainers and teachers have begun to discover that Microsoft Teams can be a great place for training & development as well. Teams has several built-in benefits which make it an ideal platform for training, including:
- Accessibility: With learners being inside Teams regularly, hosting training inside Teams means it is always just a click or two away.
- Integration: Microsoft makes it easy for outside applications to integrate with Teams, so that instead of needing to remember another website and password, apps can be accessed directly inside Teams in the form of Tabs, Bots, and menus.
- Authentication: Teams uses Microsoft 365’s industry-leading security and identity controls. By either hosting training directly in Teams, or working with apps that integrate with Teams, learners don’t need to remember new passwords for the company LMS or other learning apps – their Teams login gives them access to everything they need.
- Mobile-friendly: Team is well designed to work on mobile devices, including tablets and cell phones. While app integration does not always work with the mobile version of Teams, bots and conversations (and of course live meetings) related to training will always be available to learners anytime, anywhere.
- Teams & Channels: The ability to organize people into Teams, and topics into Channels, creates lots of flexibility in delivering training through Teams. Trainers can create one Team for a training class, then Channels for each breakout group or for each major topic area, or create a channel for training inside an existing team.
Teams Tools
While there is a growing list of training apps that integrate with Teams, several built-in Teams (and Office 365) features are already great tools for trainers. These include:
- PowerPoint: Any PowerPoint presentation can be added as a tab in a Teams Channel, or shared in the Files tab and send to learners via chat or email. ProTip: Use PowerPoint’s ability to Record a Slide Show (with narration and even video), and learners can watch and listen to their trainer anytime.
- Forms: Microsoft Forms is a great tool for creating quizzes and surveys, and is built into Office 365 and Teams.
- Stream: Microsoft’s video hosting tool, Stream, is a great way to host training videos within your organization, with more security and control over who can view each video than what you would find in a public video platform like YouTube.
- Meetings: Of course, Teams Meetings are a good tool for live training. The ability to share presentations or files during the meeting is a great benefit, plus any chat conversations during the live meeting are saved and can continue inside the channel long after the meeting is over.
- OneNote: Many people know OneNote as a note-taking tool, but the OneNote Class Notebook feature activates many additional tools for teachers and trainers, including the ability to deliver interactive presentations, collect homework assignments, send content to each student’s personal class notebook, and of course organize notes and lesson plans for any training course.
Free Webinar
The Microsoft Appstore is also full of apps that can be used for training, learner engagement, and knowledge retention. Next week Bigger Brains will be hosting a webinar looking at the training apps available inside Microsoft Teams – find more information on that here.
