2.4 Software: Microsoft Teams and Moodle Virtual Learning Environments
Since the students came from two campuses, Microsoft Teams was used to facilitate their collaborations. Additionally, Microsoft Teams, and other collaborative software such as Slack, are now widely used in most workplaces, making Teams proficiency an important employability skill.
Prior to semester start, 6 Microsoft Teams environments were created, one for each theme. A class notebook (uses built-in OneNote) was set up in each Team. The collaboration space section was where all the student could see and add to the content. To partition the large amount of new information (such as how to keep meeting minutes, legalities of filming in public or conducting interviews and the risk assessment forms for students working off campus) subsections were made to contain each type of information (Figure 2). Once students were allocated to their Microsoft Team they added sections to the collaboration space to suit their own needs. Important files such as fliers to give the public, the risk assessment forms, a short tutorial on using Microsoft Teams (Supplementary Material 2) and PDFs of the 4 team training tutorials were all uploaded to the ‘Files’ area of each Team (Figure 3). As semester progressed the groups used the ‘Posts’ page to communicate with their other members and with the lecturer (Rasmussen) and had group meetings using the video call option.
Additionally, the University of Nottingham uses Moodle as a virtual learning environment. As such students also had access to all the lecture slides and recordings via Moodle and poster submission and team contribution forms were uploaded by each student to the assignment submission box by each deadline. The storyboard was left in the Microsoft Team environment and discussed during the lesson. The video files were uploaded to the class-wide Microsoft Team (created during semester to provide additional information about strike action and the COVID-19 advice).
For filming and editing footage, students used their own cameras or mobile devices and were provided with a series of links to open-source software. This was important as students have different mobile and computer devices so finding a flawless one-size-fits all is not trivial. However, there are plenty of options available and in the ‘real world’ they will most likely be making their own decisions on what software is most appropriate. Support was offered for trouble shooting if needed, however each group managed to successfully source and implement software.