Student Use of Teams Chat for Communications with Faculty
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As the college transitions from Zoom to MS Teams for all synchronous online teaching and meetings, students may think it is appropriate to communicate with you directly using the Teams Chat feature. Despite this, communication between students and faculty should take place only through Conestoga Outlook email. Considerations for this include, but are not limited to, the retention parameters in place for MS Teams chat messages and the importance of archive capability for communications between you and your students.
You are not expected to maintain communication with students via Teams messages.
(Image created using MS Copilot)
To clearly set expectations and encourage students to use only their college email to communicate with you, here are some suggested templated messages you can consider using or revising:
Template 1: Expectations for Course Communication
Consider using this language within your Instructional Plan, via an eConestoga announcement and/or within a slide in your first week of classes.
“All communications with your professor related to this course must be carried out using your Conestoga email address within MS Outlook. While you will have access to MS Teams chat, this is not an appropriate method of communication for our course. If you choose to message your professor via Teams chat, you will receive a response asking you to resend the message via email and that no further communication will take place within Teams.”
Template 2: MS Teams Chat Response
Consider using this language within a Teams chat if a student contacts you there.
“As per our course communication expectations, I am not going to respond to your message here in Teams. Please resend this message to my email (aaaaaa@conestogac.on.ca) via your college email account in Outlook and I will gladly reply there. All future communications must be sent to me via email, as I will not be responding to any more Teams chat messages related to our course.”
It will be important for you to clearly set and revisit these expectations related to communication with your students. While MS Teams chat has been available to students for some time now, the shift to classes taking place over Teams might create some misunderstanding of appropriate methods for communication. Being proactive, consistent and clear with your expectations will set you and your students up for communication success!
Set Up Your Teams Classroom to Limit Chat to Class Time
You can manually adjust chat settings when scheduling a class meeting to restrict chat to “online during the meeting.”
Go to Teams Calendar.
Click New Class meeting and fill in the details.
Before scheduling, click Meeting Options (link appears after saving or in the calendar event).
Under “Participation“, followed by “Meeting chat“, select “In-meeting only“.
Save changes.
If you want to learn more about using MS Teams chat for teaching and learning in your classroom, see the Hub post, Boost Engagement with Online Text Chat.
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Sherri Steele
Sherri Steele, Ph.D (Medical Science) is a passionate and dedicated educator whose career in the Ontario College system has included several faculty and leadership roles since 2008. Her teaching experience is in the field of life and health sciences, spanning all levels of credentials. In her work with faculty, Sherri brings a practical and energetic approach to teaching and learning practices, with a keen interest in supporting faculty with quality assessment practices that focus on outcomes-alignment, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the progression of meaningful student learning.
