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PAL Central: Using MS Teams

An online hub of guidance and resources for our PAL Leaders and their Level 4 students.

Using MS Teams

Using MS Teams alongside your face-to-face delivery has a number of benefits including:

  • Having a consistent area your students can revisit in between PAL sessions
  • Using it as a communication channel for discussing topics for upcoming sessions
  • The use of apps such as forms and surveys to vote/get feedback before or after sessions
  • The use of file sharing
  • Enhanced GDPR (with less boundary issues than using Whatsapp or your personal Facebook profile)

How to create a Teams area

A great resource that you can use in order to communicate with your students is Microsoft Teams. This is easy to set up and you can do it using your student account. You can find a PDF with instructions below.

Personalising your space

A good way to encourage engagement from your students is to personalise your Teams space. This is a good thing to do early on! Below we have listed a couple of ways to do this:

  1. Create a Welcome Post in the main chat of your channel. By using a program such as Canva, you can create something visual with introductory information such as who you are and when your PAL Session will take place. You can adapt the elevator pitch that you created for the PAL Facilitation Course and put that information into this post. See our quick example below!
  2. Within your channel, you will be able to add files and videos that you can share with your students. This is a good way to share information/resources/worksheets that they can access outside of your PAL Sessions. 
  3. You are able to add different 'apps' such as Onenote, Youtube, Kahoot, Polly, etc. You can add these to your channel to help make your sessions more interactive. It may be more time consuming to get started with these apps, but it can be very effective. 

File Sharing

Teams acts as a sharepoint between the members of your seminar group as well as being a platform for you to host your PAL sessions.
You can share a file with the other members of your group so that they can access, view, and edit by following these instructions:

Go to your channel > go to the 'Files' tab > 'Upload' > Upload files/folder > Select your attachment and click ‘open’ > Your file should now appear as a shared file for members of your channel to edit in this tab.

Teams Etiquette

From your first PAL Session, it is a good idea to set up an etiquette with your students. For example, being respectful in the chat. It is important to have this etiquette as it can help keep your teams an area that everyone feels comfortable in using.

Data Protection

When using MS Teams, it is important to be aware of Data Protection. Please be aware and keep to our data protection guidelines. We have more information regarding Data Protection here. 

Download the app

Some of you may have already used Teams for University work, but for those who haven't here are a few tips on how to use it.

There are two ways in which you can access Teams, via the webpage and also as an app. We recommend that you download to app to access Teams, which you can do through this link. Once you have downloaded Teams, you will need to sign in using your Univerity Login. 

Please see the sections on this page titled 'An Overview of Teams' and 'Navigating the Toolbar' for more information on the basics of Teams.

An Overview of Teams

Microsoft's guide to Teams for students

Microsoft have published a guide on using Teams specifically for students and people in education: Microsoft Teams education guide.

This guide has more information on signing in, using channels, uploading posts and files, notifications, calls, and the toolbar.