The Course Connector for MS Teams is a Brightspace widget that instructors can use to quickly create Teams sites. It is located at the bottom on the default homepage for each Brightspace course site.
The Teams Connector will create a new Teams site that includes all students, TAs, and instructors as they are listed in the Brightspace site’s Classlist. It can use the entire site roster or create a Team for each section.
The Course Connector widget is included with several of Brock’s Brightspace homepage options and an instructor can choose to switch to one that does not use it, if necessary.
Importing material from an older course site may revert a site’s homepage to an past version that does not have the Course Connector widget. In that case, simply switch to one that does use it.
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Things to keep in mind
Allow at least 30 minutes for the new Teams site to be fully created, as not all features become available immediately. This time will increase for larger courses.
When creating a Team for each section, a ‘core’ Teams site will still be made alongside the sites for each section present in the Brightspace site. If a Brightspace site includes only one section, creating a team for each section will thus result in the creation of two Teams sites.
Remember to activate a Teams site when it’s ready for student access.
An issue is currently affecting Teams sites created with the Teams Connector that utilize more than two channels. Contact edtech@brocku.ca for further assistance or switch to the legacy Teams client to create the channels without error.
Use the Teams Course Connector to create a site
The Teams Course Connector widget is available to the instructor at the bottom of the Brightspace site’s Homepage. Click Create Course Team to begin.
Optionally create separate Teams sites for separate course sections
Activate Create a team for each section to create a Teams site which includes the enrollment of each Section that’s listed within the Brightspace site. See the Sections area of the Brightspace site for information about available Sections.
This option will always create a principal Teams site as well as additional Teams sites for each Section that’s present within the site, even if only one Section is present in Brightspace.
Optionally turn off the Teams Course Connector
The Teams Course Connector is available on specific Homepages in Brightspace, and a Homepage with the Course Connector is active within your site by default. To turn off the Course Connector, change the default homepage in your Brightspace site to one which doesn’t include the Course Connector.
After opening a Brightspace site in which you have an Instructor role, open Course Tools from the Navbar and then select Course Admin.
Click Homepages.
Open the Active Homepage dropdown and then select a Homepage that does not display +Teams as part of the description.
Click Apply.