Enhance online group collaboration using MS Teams!
MS Teams, a MS Office 365 integration, is a communication and productivity platform available for the HKUST community. It helps enhance productivity and engagement for teamwork in courses. MS Teams’ strength is its all-in-one portal that makes managing group work easier. Using your HKUST MS Office 365 account and just a few clicks, MS Teams can help you manage collaboration work, view all live and on-going discussions on them and monitor all groups’ progress.
What’s the difference between Zoom and MS Teams?
Below is a quick comparison between the two.
| Zoom | MS Teams | |
| Online teaching features | ||
| Polling | ✔ | ✔ |
| Screen sharing | ✔ | ✔ |
| Breakout rooms | ✔ | ✖ |
| Chat | ✔ | ✔ |
| Distributing files via chat | ✔ | ✔ |
| Whiteboard (for annotation) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Managing students in the class | ||
| Managing students' audio | ✔ | ✔ |
| Managing students' video | ✔ | ✖ |
| Verifying identity in the waiting room | ✔ | ✔ |
| Adding virtual background | ✔ | ✔ |
| Non-verbal responses | ✔ | ✔ |
| Administrative related features | ||
| Managing existing meetings | ✔ | ✖ |
| Creating recurring meetings | ✔ | ✖ |
| Sharing recordings to students | ✔ | ✖ |
| Generating participant reports | ✔ | ✖ |
| Maximum number of users in a meeting | 300 | 250 |
| Zoom | MS Teams | |
| Purpose: | Online teaching and learning | Online collaboration for small groups |
| Verdict: | We recommend Zoom more for live online teaching and learning, while MS Teams can be used for student groups to collaborate on projects for a small class or for research groups. They are similar in terms of interactive video conferencing but Zoom provides instructors with much greater control of the online class compared to MS Teams. MS Teams work better for small classes with heavy collaboration components that involve projects (including FYP/Capstone/UROP); presentations; collaborative writing; consultations; research and seminars. | |
Here are some resources to help you explore MS Teams' collaborative features and functions:
- Access to MS Teams (by ITSC)
- Set-up: How to set-up MS Teams
- Features: Overview of how to use MS Teams features
- Help Videos: MS Teams Training Videos
If you would like to further explore MS Teams for your teaching purpose, please email canvas@ust.hk to set up a consultation session.
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