Microsoft Teams Integration in Blackboard Ultra

This helpsheet refers to ‘Approach C’ described in the Scheduling Microsoft Teams in Blackboard Original and Ultra guidance on the Digital Education Resources Hub. Note: this guidance is for Blackboard Ultra Courses only.

Approach C involves using the Microsoft Teams Integration (LTI 1.3) for Blackboard Ultra which provides you with the ability to create one-off and re-occurring meetings as well as the option to create a ‘Teams site’ for your module in just a few clicks. Importantly, this integration features an ‘Add Entire Class’ button which allows you to add all your students to the meeting invite without needing to manually add them one by one.

Overview

There are two aspects of the new Microsoft LTI 1.3 Integration for Blackboard – the meeting scheduler and the class (site) creator.

The core benefit of the meeting scheduler is that it allows the instructor to make use of an ‘Add Entire Class’ button which automatically populates the ‘Required’ field in the meeting invite based on the user enrolments on the Blackboard course (staff and students).

Staff and students can access the Microsoft Teams scheduled for the module either in Blackboard from the left-hand menu of the course, or from within their Microsoft Outlook/Microsoft Teams calendar.

Enabling the Microsoft Teams Integration

The first time you access your Blackboard Course for the academic year you will need to enable the Microsoft Teams Integration. You only need to do this once per course, and once you have clicked enable, the setup takes less than 5 minutes in the background.

1. Firstly, navigate to your Blackboard Ultra Couse.
2. On the left hand menu you will see an ‘Enable Microsoft Teams‘ hyperlink.
3. This will open a window with a ‘sync with Microsoft Teams’ button, you will need to click this.

The integration will now complete the setup in the background, you can close your Blackboard course whilst you wait if required. This usually takes around 60 seconds and you will receive a notification from Microsoft Teams when this setup is complete.

Whilst there is no mandatory requirement for you to use the Teams site that is created during this process, the integration has to create a Teams site in order to have access to the most up-to-date users list on your Blackboard course.

This Teams site is different from other sites that you may be added to as it is not visible to students unless you explicitly activate it. Therefore, if you are only using the Teams Meeting scheduler to schedule your online teaching and learning you can simply ignore and hide (do not delete) this site from your list of Teams within Microsoft Teams.

Scheduling Online Teaching and Learning

The process for scheduling either one-off or regular re-occurring Microsoft Teams events from within Blackboard Learn Ultra courses is very similar to the experience you would have when scheduling a meeting in the Microsoft Teams desktop or web application. In order to do this complete the following:

1. Access your Blackboard Learn Ultra course and click on the ‘Open Microsoft Teams’ link. You will see two options presented, select the first option labelled ‘Open Microsoft Teams meetings’.
2. You will then see a Microsoft Teams interface within Blackboard, click on the ‘New Meeting’ button in the top right hand corner.

3. Enter a title for your meeting as you usually would when scheduling online teaching and learning. We recommend you include the module ID and the type of session in the title.
4. Then select the relevant date, time, and reoccurring setup if required. In this example below, we are scheduling an online seminar which takes place every Monday at 9AM.

5. Next, the important bit, click on the ‘Add Entire Class’ button. This will automatically add all users enrolled on your Blackboard module to the meeting.

Note: by adding the students to the required field, this ensures that the meeting shows in both their Outlook and Teams calendar as well as in Blackboard, and also affords you additional functionality such as the ability to schedule breakout rooms ahead of a session.

Important: when you click ‘Add Entire Class’ this will add ALL users on the Blackboard site. Therefore depending on how your school manages Blackboard enrolments you may need to scan the list and remove administrators or other teaching staff who are not part of the online session.

6. Lastly, click Save, and the meeting invite will be sent to all students on your module. Both staff and students will be able to access the Microsoft Teams meeting either from the left-hand menu of Blackboard in the same way you accessed to schedule the meeting, or they can join from their Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams calendar.