Apr 2021
Integrating Teams and Timetables to Drive Engagement
With 34,000 students, Manchester Metropolitan University is one of the largest academic institutions in the UK. The University takes pride in its world class student experience so when the pandemic struck, and face-to-face lectures suddenly had to go online, they turned to Waterstons for help minimising the impact and confusion this huge challenge could have caused.
Sector Principal - Education
We wanted to make it as simple as possible for students to access their lectures, lab sessions and meetings so we brought the University’s timetabling system and Microsoft Teams together. Clever integration using the Microsoft Graph API means that students only need to look in their calendars for an up-to-date meeting link which takes them exactly where they need to go.
Teams meetings are all created without any human intervention, giving tutors more time to focus on their students. Teams channels, meetings and permissions are all set up based on the contents of the timetabling system and invitations are sent automatically to the relevant students. Meanwhile, in the background we have also integrated the collection of real-time Teams attendance data into the University’s existing engagement monitoring platform so tutors aren’t missing out on valuable support cues.
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We partnered with Microsoft and Manchester Metropolitan University to delve into this implementation in a recent webinar, find out more.