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MS Teams as a Learning Management System (LMS)


The recent time of Remote Teaching in on-line mode has realized that there is a great scope of using technology in teaching-learning. The education in online mode has also introduced some interesting applications and webtools which can play very effective role in education. Microsoft Teams is such a digital platform where a teacher can deal with his students including some interactive activities. Many of the teachers only know MS Teams as a video conferencing tool. And although it makes a great tool for this, especially with the latest features, the app can help teachers much more as it allows to manage the classes and learning content without leaving the platform. In fa
ct, MS teams can work as one of the handy Learning Management Systems in higher education.

What is LMS (Learning Management System)?

A learning management system (LMS) is a software that is designed specifically to create, distribute, and manage the delivery of educational content. The LMS can be hosted as a stand-alone product on the company server, or it can be a cloud-based platform that is hosted by the software firm.

  • Learning management system is a technology that can improve learning, make it faster, productive, cost-effective, and what is more important - trackable. 
  • The most basic LMS contains a core functional platform that enables administrators to upload learning content, deliver lessons to students, serving notifications, and share data with authorized users. 
  • An LMS most often operates inside of a web-browser, behind a secure sign-on process. 
  • It gives all students and instructors easy access to courses on-the-go, while administrators and leaders can monitor student progress and make improvements. 

Looking at the above characteristics, we can make most of the MS Teams as an LSM in higher education. There are different types of LMSs. MS Teams can fall in to Free, Licensed, Cloud based and enterprise type of LMS.

The following features of MS Teams make it an LSM

Administration Level

  • Single Admin center where users can be added and managed 
  • Unique Account and Password for each User
  • Allotting Educational Policies to Faculties and Students
  • All Restriction rights to Head of the Institute
  • Daily, Monthly or Yearly report of activities of each user and entire institute
  • Calendar view of all lectures arranged by Faculty
  • Detailed Attendance report of Faculty and Students
  • Space for Staff meeting
  • Office data management through inbuilt Excel, Word and Forms
  • Official communication through Live meeting, Outlook mail account

For the Teachers

  • Virtual classroom creation which can be joined with LINK or Class code
  • Channel creation for easy classroom access 
  • Restriction rights regarding role of students in the virtual classroom
  • Video conferencing for delivering lectures, presentations
  • Live meeting recording, Transcription with download option
  • Presentation with screen sharing, White-board and PPT show
  • Attendance reports with joining time stamp (Daily, Monthly or Yearly)
  • Content sharing in in form of word, pdf, video, audio, image etc. file
  • MCQ test in MS Forms, Assignment submission with dead-line and auto-grading options
  • Test/Assignment wise Grade reports
  • Activities with Kahoot, Polly, Quiz and many more
  • Collaborative work with One-Note facility
  • Providing Resources with Wikipedia, YouTube and many more 
  • Space for activities like online Debate, Discussion, Interview with Meeting Room

For Students

  • Personal account for for learning activities
  • Easy access of classroom and channels 
  • Interaction with teachers anytime
  • Interesting and interactive live lecture experience
  • Peer discussion space in channel 
  • Raise hand, Chat, Emoji reactions, Pin options in video meetings
  • Presentation with screen sharing
  • Collaborative learning with One-Note 
  • Auto grades in assignments and MCQ tests
  • Test, Assignment storage in One Drive account
  • Lecture recordings available anytime
  • Accessing digital content and resources 

Actually, MS Teams is much more than this. The above features are just listed by user experiences. One of the strongest sides of MS Teams is its security aspect at administration and academic levels. The institution's control and reporting over faculty and students make it a perfect tool for administration management system. At the same time, space and scope for interactive teachers-students activities with numbers of in-built and third party applications make it an effective Learning Management System. In true sense it is a platform where Communication, Collaboration and Creation are possible anytime, anywhere.


(Watch Webinar on 'Teaching Through MS Teams' by Dr.Jignesh Gohil)




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