Making Your Microsoft Teams Meetings Interactive and Engaging
What will this topic cover?
This topic is part of the wider Effective Communication & Collaboration pathway. The topic will introduce you to tools and features within MS Teams that can be used to help make your meetings more interactive and engaging for those attending.
Making MS Teams meetings more interactive and engaging can significantly boost team morale and productivity. When staff actively participate, it fosters a sense of community and collaboration, leading to more innovative ideas and effective problem-solving. Engaging meetings can also reduce fatigue and keep everyone more focused and motivated.
PowerPoint Live allows attendees to navigate through slides at their own pace, use slide translation, and adjust their own settings for better readability.
Tools such as MS Whiteboard can be used within Teams meetings to support collaboration and encourage ideation in a digital space.
Polls can be used within Teams meetings to gather information from your colleagues as well as to conduct votes and gauge satisfaction or confidence levels.
How to use this topic page
This topic page is split up into different sections. Each section has a step and an activity to complete. These include scenarios and links off to instructions to try elements for yourself. Each learning unit also has a reflective section to think about how this will be used within your own practice.
Step 1: Sharing Slides using PowerPoint Live
Why use PowerPoint Live?
Using PowerPoint Live in Teams meetings can transform the way presentations are delivered and received. This feature allows presenters to engage with their audience more effectively by seeing real-time reactions, managing raised hands, and responding to chat messages without leaving the presentation view. This level of interaction helps maintain audience attention and encourages active participation, making meetings more dynamic and productive.
Additionally, PowerPoint Live offers personalised viewing experiences for attendees. Participants can navigate through slides at their own pace, use translation features, and adjust settings for better readability, such as high contrast mode. These accessibility options ensure that everyone can follow along comfortably, making the presentation more inclusive. The integrated tools like laser pointers and highlighters also enable presenters to emphasise key points, enhancing the overall clarity and impact of the presentation.
Activity 1: Try it yourself
Visit the link below, read the instructions to learn how to share slides through PowerPoint Live. Have a go for yourself after reading through the guide. You may want to set up a meeting with a couple of colleagues to trial this tool.
Step 2: Setting Up Breakout Rooms in MS Teams
When should I use breakout rooms?
Breakout rooms in Teams meetings are most effective when you need to facilitate small group discussions, brainstorming sessions, or collaborative tasks. They allow participants to engage more deeply with specific topics, fostering more focused and meaningful conversations. Breakout rooms are particularly useful in training sessions, workshops, and large meetings where dividing attendees into smaller groups can enhance participation and ensure everyone’s voice is heard. By providing a more intimate setting, breakout rooms encourage active involvement, creativity, and problem-solving, ultimately leading to more productive and engaging meetings.
Activity 2: Scenario
Read through this scenario and think about the question below. Click on the answer button to find out an example solution.
Sam recently hosted a team meeting. They discussed the new strategies and priorities that are being proposed for the department and wanted to get their team’s thoughts, feedback and suggestions. Sam’s team consists of around 30 people. A small group of the team with strong opinions spent most of the meeting in discussion about how they felt. After the meeting, Sam overheard some of their colleagues talking about how they felt the meeting wasn’t very productive and most people didn’t get a chance to contribute.
What could Sam have done differently?
Using breakout rooms would have enable Sam to split their teams up into smaller groups for the meeting. This would have made it easier for everyone to contribute within their smaller groups, especially as some people don’t feel comfortable speaking in large groups. To get a better idea of the general thoughts and feelings around the new strategies and priorities, Sam could have asked each group to make some notes about their discussion and select a member to present the group’s main points to the whole team when they are called back from the breakout rooms.
Sam could also have collected feedback using a poll or asked the team to brainstorm and write down their thoughts and suggestion on a collaborative Whiteboard. Doing so would have provided an alternative means of engagement to which everyone could contribute and he would have a record of the information shared.
Step 3: Using Microsoft Whiteboard within Teams
Why use MS Whiteboard in your Teams meeting?
Using MS Whiteboard in Teams meetings can significantly enhance collaboration and creativity. This digital canvas allows team members to brainstorm ideas, sketch diagrams, and share notes in real-time, making it easier to visualise concepts and solve problems collectively. The interactive nature of the whiteboard encourages participation from all attendees, fostering a more inclusive and engaging meeting environment.
Activity 3: Try it yourself
Visit the link below, read through the instructions to learn how to add and use MS Whiteboard within a Teams meeting. Have a go for yourself after reading through the guide. You may want to set up a meeting with a couple of colleagues to trial this tool.
Step 4: Using Polls within MS Teams
What are the benefits of using Polls within Teams meetings?
Using polls in Teams meetings offers several benefits by enhancing engagement and gathering instant feedback. Polls provide a quick and interactive way to gauge opinions, make decisions, and understand the audience’s knowledge or preferences. They can break the monotony of long meetings, encourage participation from all attendees, and ensure that everyone’s voice is heard. Additionally, the immediate results from polls can help guide the direction of the discussion, making meetings more dynamic and responsive to the needs of the participants.
Activity 4: Try it yourself
Visit the link below and learn how to create a poll within a Teams meeting. You may want to set up a meeting with a couple of colleagues to trial this tool.
Step 5: Reflection
What have I learnt from this learning topic?
This step is designed to help you think about what you have learned and how this applies to your own practice and context. Learning Activity 5 will ask you some questions to help you with this reflection.
Activity 5: Reflect
Use the following questions to help you think about your own practice.
- Can you think of any specific examples or situations relating to your work where you might use one of the suggested tools in a Teams meeting?
- Do you think you can improve your practice and how?
- Are there any conversations you need to have with colleagues to get buy in and encourage the use of these tools in your meetings?
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