Monthly Archives: May 2023

Student Guide to Microsoft Teams Assignments

For students, Microsoft Teams Assignments is a powerful tool for managing schoolwork, staying organised and keeping track of homework grades and feedback.

In this guide, we run through the basics of Microsoft Teams Assignments for students, from getting notified about your new assignments and accessing resources to completing homework and viewing teacher feedback.




View your assignments in Microsoft Teams.

There are a few ways you can view your assignments in Microsoft Teams:

View assignments for a specific class in Teams.

Go to the Class Team of the class you want to view assignments for and tap the Assignments tab.

Viewing assignments from Class Teams

View all your upcoming, past and completed assignments.

Go to the My Teams toolbar on the left-hand side of your screen and select Assignments.

Viewing assignments from Assignments tab

From here, you can select Upcoming, Past due and Completed to see your assignments.

View past upcoming and completed assignments in teams

Notifications about new assignments in Teams.

You should be notified in your Activity feed whenever a teacher sets you a new assignment. Tap the assignment in the Activity feed to view it.

Viewing assignments from Activity Feed

Completing an assignment in Microsoft Teams.

Open your assignment to view all the details and resources provided by your teacher. This could include a set of instructions/description of your assignment, attached reference materials/worksheets and the due date and time.

View Assignments in Microsoft Teams

If the assignment is being graded, you can view how many points are available, plus the rubric (marking scheme).

View Rubrics for Assignments in Microsoft Teams

If your teacher has attached a worksheet or template for you to work from, you can click on the attachment and work directly in Teams.

View Assignments in Microsoft Teams Reference Materials

If you need to add files or documents to complete your assignment, tap Attach (paperclip) and you have the choice to:

  • Upload a file from your device.
  • Attach a file from OneDrive.
  • Attach a file from another Teams channel.

Did you know?

You don’t have to finish your assignment in one go. You can come back to your assignment at any time. Close Teams and your progress is automatically saved.


Submitting an assignment in Microsoft Teams.

When you’re happy with the work you’ve done, you can submit your assignment by tapping Turn in in the top right-hand corner.

Turning in an assignment in Microsoft Teams

View feedback and grades for your Assignment.

You can view your grades and feedback on your work by going to Assignments and then selecting Completed.

If your homework was graded with points, you can see these on the right-hand side. 

 

If your assignment contains any feedback, you can see a small feedback bubble.View grades on your Assignments in Microsoft Teams

Tap the assignment to find out more about your feedback. You can also select Rubric to see how your work has been marked against the marking scheme. 

Sometimes your teacher may leave feedback on the document itself. 

feedback in teams

View all your grades from one class.

Go to the class in Teams you want to view grades for and tap Grades to bring up a grid of all the work you’ve completed for that class, whether you’ve turned it in on time and any feedback/grades from your teacher.

view grades

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Digital transformation in a leading independent boarding school

Head of Digital Learning at a leading independent school talks about how using Microsoft 365 has developed and improved teaching and learning.  

Henry Exham currently teaches at a boarding school with 830 students ranging from 13-18. He joins our COO Darren Hemming to talk about how the school utilises Microsoft 365 and how it can be useful for independent schools looking to improve and develop their teaching and learning.  



 

Improving communication in an independent boarding school with SharePoint. 

Communication is essential in a large boarding school, Henry points out. With students living on campus, there is a lot more ground to cover when it comes to communicating about extracurricular activities and “school-home” life alongside their academic timetables.  

“We’re interested in providing a whole-person education and technology has been an important part of our journey over the last five years,” says Henry. 

The SharePoint site that Cloud Design Box has created with the school acts as a central hub and offers information for anything a student or teacher may need for their daily life at the school.  

With a feed of updates and news, students can keep up to date with ongoing activities, such as sports, music lessons and school announcements.  

Meanwhile, staff have access to up-to-date information about what’s going on in the school and links to staff-only areas where they can find resources.  

“It’s great having one central place to go, and it links to all of our other systems, so everyone knows to go to SharePoint first to find what they’re looking for.” 

The home site offers personalised features, meaning when users log in, they get content tailored to them. For example, reminders, upcoming assignments and events.  

“SharePoint really joins all the facets of daily life in the school,” Henry adds.

Onboarding an independent boarding school to Microsoft 365

Head of Digital Learning at a leading independent boarding school reveals 5 ways in which they have successfully onboarded staff and students to Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint.

Learn more →

The benefits of subject sites in SharePoint.  

Centralised subject sites place resources for one subject into easy-to-access areas for students and staff. Driven by MIS data, the subject sites have a document library for each year group.  

In the podcast, Henry shares how this setup has been beneficial for the school:  

“They’re fantastic as it allows teachers to quickly share large numbers of files with students without sending emails or things getting lost in their inboxes,” he explains. 

“One example is GCSE past papers that we uploaded for Year 11 only. It’s great because we know that year group will need to have access to that when the time comes, but it’s separate from the other year groups.” 

Creating long-term resources in OneNote. 

OneNote has been particularly useful in Henry’s school, allowing teachers to collaborate, share and build on each other learning resources.  

“Most of our teachers use Class Notebook, which is attached to the corresponding Class Team so everything is in one place for the student,” Henry describes. 

“We’ve got a Biology team just for the teachers of the subject and any Notebook pages we create for our classes we put them back into the shared OneNote so they can be reused and built upon.”  

A vision for the future. 

With technology and digital learning continuously developing, Henry wishes to delve further to look at the “more interesting” features of Teams and Microsoft 365.

Henry is particularly interested in AI technology and mentions that he can already see how this is going to be beneficial in education:

“PowerPoint offers an automated caption feature. Captions are time-consuming and may not be something teachers include in their presentations. But this new feature can add captions instantly,” he says.

With Year 9, he is keen to incorporate technology into each subject, showing students the digital skills they’ll be expected to have in their future workplaces. He wants this initiative to spread further through each year group, including Sixth Form, who will need these skills as they enter the workplace or higher education.

If you want to know more about Cloud Design Box and how we can help your school or MAT harness the full power of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, book a free demo today.  

Catch up on all the episodes of our podcast on YouTube, Spotify or on our website.

5 top tips for adopting Microsoft 365 from a leading independent boarding school

Head of Digital Learning at a leading independent boarding school reveals 5 ways in which they have successfully onboarded staff and students to Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint.

Henry Exham currently teaches at a boarding school with 830 students ranging from 13-18. In our latest podcast, he joins COO Darren Hemming and Trainer & Solutions Consultant Joe Scott to talk about the challenges and successes of getting everyone in the school on board with Microsoft 365.

The school has worked with Cloud Design Box to harness the full power of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, developing a clear, long-term user adoption strategy and embedding the new technology across all facets of school life.

Improving communication at an independent school

Discover how this independent school is transforming communication and developing teaching and learning with Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint

Learn more →

Below, we’ve rounded up Henry’s top tips for adopting Microsoft 365 in an independent boarding school.

Identify champions to help you spread the word.

From the early stages of adopting Microsoft 365, Henry identified the key champions of the software – those teachers who had already been using the Microsoft Suite in their lessons and teaching:

“We had some good leaders in the pack already, who could help us spread the word.”

Start small.

Moving over to a whole new software, with new systems and processes can be overwhelming, so Henry suggests starting small and keeping things simple at first.

The first step was making it mandatory for teachers to set assignments and homework in Teams to get them using the software. Then Henry slowly ramped it up so it grew organically from there.

“You’re not going to convert every teacher overnight. So, we started off very gently with Teams and made everything really simple. Asking them to set all homework via Teams and showing them how they could upload resources too, but this wasn’t essential at this stage.”

Invest in training.

With the support of Cloud Design Box training up different areas of the school, Henry organised a focused teaching and learning week called “Teams week”:

“I created over 50 YouTube training videos, where I went through some of the basics of Teams and SharePoint, organising them into different levels so teachers could pick the level they were at and commit to learning something new that week,” he explains

“Everybody upskilled that week, improving their knowledge of Microsoft 365.”

Henry has also committed to onboarding new staff that join the school, providing four hours of IT training in their first term.

Give a reason to be engaged.

Embedding Microsoft 365 into the school’s digital learning strategy has helped everyone in the school understand its benefits and get onboard:

“Ultimately, our digital strategy is to prepare our students to be learners outside of education and prepare them for their future workplace or higher education, with the right digital skills. Teams fits well with this as it’s used in organisations all over the world. We’re building skills for the future and it’s easy to sell in that way.”

Build it into the curriculum.

To further achieve this digital strategy, Henry has created a digital skills curriculum for Year 9 students to integrate Teams into all their subjects. For example, creating spreadsheets in science and wordprocessing in history:

“A lot of people expect the younger generation to have IT skills as they are ‘digital natives’. But, just because they know how to scroll on a smartphone, doesn’t mean they know how to format a spreadsheet or document,” he adds.

“One example of this is setting them a task in English to create a blog about their favourite book, but they have to use Teams to create a full announcement, add an image, link to a YouTube video and post to the dedicated Teams channel.”

If you want to know more about Cloud Design Box and how we can help your school or MAT harness the full power of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, book a free demo today.  

Catch up on all the episodes of our podcast on YouTube, Spotify or on our website.

Cloud Design Box exhibiting at The Northern and Eastern Education Shows

This summer, Cloud Design Box is exhibiting at The Northern and Eastern Education Shows, which are part of the country’s leading series of events for promoting and developing effective school leadership, management, teaching and learning.  

Promising inspirational workshops, keynote speakers and a comprehensive exhibition of suppliers and service providers for schools and academies, both shows are an excellent opportunity for senior leaders to meet, network, share experiences and spark new ideas.  

Northern Education Show

The Northern Education Show takes place at Bolton Stadium Hotel in Bolton on Tuesday 6 June 2023 and The Eastern Education Show takes place at Newmarket Racecourse on Thursday 15 June 2023.  

The conferences are free to attend for all Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers, Finance Directors, Bursars, Business Managers, Governors, Local Authority Education Leaders, PTA’s, IT Managers and school leadership teams from the state, academy and private sectors.

“The Cloud Design Box team is always excited to meet face-to-face with schools, academies and trusts as it gives us a deeper insight into their challenges and successes with blended learning,” Customer Success Manager Joanne Harkin-Arro explains.  

“Personally, I love seeing those “ah-ha!” moments when we demonstrate how our product can help them with the stuff taking up a lot of their time and budgets.” 

Eastern Education Show

Come down to chat with Joanne and the rest of the team about accelerating digital transformation in your school, or trust with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.  

We’ll be on hand to discuss how we can help you transform communication and collaboration across your school or MAT, as well as equip your teachers and students with Microsoft’s latest tools to facilitate hybrid learning.  

Book your free place for The Northern Education Show here. 

Book your free place for The Eastern Education Show here. 

Safeguarding Microsoft Teams in schools and MATs

As a school, MAT or college teacher, safeguarding your students from bullying and harassment is a top priority. As students spend more time online – both for education and during their leisure time – it’s more important than ever to have the tools in place to make sure they’re safe.

In this free webinar, Cloud Design Box is joined by NetSupport to discuss how schools and MATs can safeguard students with tools in Microsoft Teams.

Specialising in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint for education, Cloud Design Box is a Microsoft Partner and currently supports over 450 schools, academies, colleges and MATs.

NetSupport is a leading producer of educational and corporate software solutions, with over 33 year’s of developmental expertise and 19 million users worldwide. From IT management and remote control solutions to classroom management and online safety, we help organisations across a range of sectors to manage and maximise their technology.

During the webinar, NetSupport reveals their latest cloud-based classroom solution – Classroom.cloud, covering the following topics:

  • Safeguarding students in Microsoft Teams
  • Keyword phrase matching and monitoring
  • Whole device monitoring vs browser monitoring
  • Safeguarding students outside of the classroom


If you liked this webinar, we host regular free events aimed at schools and MATs to help them harness the full power of Microsoft 365. Check out all of our upcoming sessions on our events page.

How to set up weighted grading categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments

Weighted grading categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments provide your students with an overall percentage grade based on the different weightings and different assignments that you can set.  

For example, you can set up homework as making up 20% of a student’s grade, quizzes as 30% and in-class assignments at 50%.

Did you know that you can set up grade weighting categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments? 

In this guide, Joe shows you: 

  • How to switch grade weighting on/off. 
  • How to set up and manage your weighted grading categories. 
  • How to view weighted grade insights for your whole class.
  • How to view weighted grade insights for an individual student.




How to switch on graded weighted categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments. 

  1. Head to Assignments in your selected Class Team. 
  2. Select the Assignment settings cog in the right-hand corner. 

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

3. Under Grade settings, switch the Weighted grading categories toggle “on”.

grading categories

How to set up weighted graded categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments.  

  1. Head to Assignments in your selected Class Team. 
  2. Select the Assignment settings cog in the right-hand corner. 

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

3. Under Grade settings, switch the Weighted grading categories toggle “on”. A window will open for you to manage your grading categories.

Weighted grading cats

4. Tap Add grading category. 

grading

5. Type a category name (e.g. Homework) and select a percentage (e.g. 30%). This would mean 30% of the student’s overall grade is made up of their homework grades.  

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

Tip

Percentages must add up to 100%.



6. Tap Save to save your grading categories.  

7. Next time you create a new assignment in Teams, you can select a Grading category. 

MS Teams weighted grading

Tip

If you wish to set an assignment that doesn’t go towards a student’s final grade, leave the Points section blank when you’re creating the assignment in Teams.

 

How to edit weighted graded categories in Microsoft Teams Assignments.

  1. Head to Assignments in your selected Class Team.
  2. Select the Assignment settings cog in the right-hand corner. 

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

3. Under Grade settings, select Manage grading categories next to Weighted grading categories. A window will open for you to manage your grading categories. 

4. From here, you can alter the names and percentages of your grading categories, as well as add and remove categories.  

5. Tap Save to save these grading categories.  

View weighted grading insights for assignments for your whole class. 

  1. Go to Insights in your Class Team. 
  2. Select Assignments.

Cat in teams

3. Scroll down to Average grade and select Grading categories. 

As you can see from this example, this class did slightly better overall on the quiz than on the homework.  

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

View weighted grade insights for an individual student. 

  1.  Go to Insights in your Class Team. 
  2. Select Assignments. 
  3. Use the search bar to search for the name of your student. 

From here, you can see the student’s grades compared with the rest of the class, their average grade and their weighted grading categories.  

In this example, this student did slightly better in their homework than the quiz, and their overall grade is 75.4%.  

Weighted Grading Categories in Microsoft Teams

If you’d like to find more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We post new content on Microsoft Teams and SharePoint every week. 

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The power of formative assessment in teaching and learning

Formative’s Ryan Clark discusses the power of real-time assessments in the classroom and how this data empowers teachers to recognise learning opportunities at an earlier stage while giving students agency in their own development.  

Ryan Clark joins Darren Hemming on the Cloud Design Box podcast to talk about this new approach to teaching and how Formative’s technology is supporting teachers to gather important data about class comprehension in and outside of the classroom.  





“Formative is a future-focused EdTech company that leverages the power of formative assessments to build the perfect tool for school districts and classrooms,” Ryan explains. 

“By creating real-time assessments, Formative hopes to give educators the tools and data to guide instructional decisions throughout the classroom.” 

Craig Jones, the CEO of Formative, created the concept while working as a middle school Science teacher. He believed that seeing growth in real-time was the most effective way to help students improve their learning and used a mixture of different tools to track student progress and get feedback from his class.  

Instruct, assess, engage and analyse.  

The Formative platform offers the ability to track students’ work in real-time, allowing teachers to monitor student understanding of their lesson and adapt the lesson/assignment if the class isn’t fully understanding the subject or questions.  

“The idea is to bring assessment into the instruction part of the lesson, rather than teaching a lesson and assessing the students at a later stage,” says Ryan. 

“Teachers can catch any misconceptions or misunderstandings individual students – or the whole class – might be making. So rather than teaching a lesson on Monday, then finding out on Thursday the students didn’t understand the lesson, you can recognise this on Monday with the data captured with the Formative tools.” 

Formative example

Instant insights into your teaching. 

Formative allows you to look at whole class trends and drill down into individual students, so you can see who understands the lesson and who may need additional support. 

The teacher dashboard allows you to see student answers coming in in real-time and you can even change up your assessment while students are still answering questions. 

feedback

You can modify assessments so that students receive marks instantly and can go through their answers straight away. Or alternatively, you can set up delayed feedback so everyone receives it at the same time, which is handy if you want to go through the answers as a class.  

teams embed formativeFor more in-depth assignments and answers, teachers can offer individual feedback for students or select multiple students to offer feedback to.  

Saving teachers time.  

Formative connects to Microsoft 365 and Teams, meaning you can skip all the administrative tasks like uploading your classes to the Formative platform. From Teams, you can automatically transfer classes and resources over.  

Ryan demonstrates how to quickly create an engaging and interactive worksheet in Formative from a Word Document. 

What’s more, you can share your Formatives in Microsoft Teams so that everything your students need is all in one place.  

Share teams

And, if you’re a Cloud Design Box customer, all of your classes in Teams are synced with your school or trust’s MIS data, meaning everything is there for you waiting – you simply turn up and teach. 

If you want to know more about Cloud Design Box and how we can help your school or MAT harness the full power of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, book a free demo today.  

Catch up on all the episodes of our podcast on YouTube, Spotify or on our website.