Kent State University offers hybrid learning for remote and in-room students with Microsoft Teams

Times may change, but core values at Kent State University remain constant. Senior Vice President and Provost Dr. Melody Tankersley says she and her colleagues are focused on their mission, “To be a community of change agents that empowers each and every student, taking them where they are today and helping them be who they want to be.” A key requirement, she says, is to make first-rate education available and accessible to all, regardless of personal or economic circumstance.

The university has been doing just that for well over a century, but in the past few years a new challenge led Melody and her staff to re-think their strategy. “When the pandemic hit, we had to pivot,” she says. Accessibility was threatened as students were forced off campus, and online learning suddenly became the new norm. Melody says, “It was difficult, but we had the available expertise and the will to make changes, and in the end, those changes really empowered us as a university to see opportunities we’d never seen before. That’s the power of what happened, and why it will make us even more successful in future.”

Turning that challenge into a triumph involved not just changes to teaching, but also to meetings, faculty office hours, research, and collaboration. The university had to rethink all of its core operations. And a key driver for those changes, says Melody, came from her IT department. “We achieved our goals and furthered our mission with technology. Specifically, with Microsoft Teams, and Teams Rooms.”

Empowering change with technology

That IT department is run by John Rathje, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO. John sees his department’s role very clearly; “We provide the digital infrastructure for our faculty, our administration, and our researchers to best support our students and our broader mission as a university,” he says. We think of technology as a support, an enabler, and an innovator in our journey at Kent State.” He and his team had already taken opportunities provided by new technologies to underpin online learning, but when asked for a response to the rapidly accelerated requirements brought on by the pandemic, he focused on finding a best-in-class solution that would work well with the university’s established Microsoft 365–based environment, and provide strong support for the recently adopted Canvas learning management system.

Rathje says, “We completely directed our focus into Teams. That isn't to say that we don't have other tools. But Teams really became the centerpiece of our attention and the foundation for how we would not only meet those requirements, but exceed them in providing a new platform with new opportunities for collaborative remote work.” The university had already adopted Teams for administrative functions for six months or so, with strong adoption. But now it had to introduce Teams to the core business of teaching, in what Executive Director of Support Infrastructure and Research Technology Dr. James Raber calls, “A Herculean effort to outfit all of our classrooms across all eight campuses. That’s about a thousand rooms with new technology.” A successful pilot launch of Teams alongside Canvas readied it for full deployment for all courses in the Spring 2022 semester.

A crucial part of that effort goes toward adoption—familiarizing faculty, staff, and students with the technology to the point where it becomes a natural part of their teaching and learning workflows. “There’s a spectrum of comfort with technology, so we very quickly created curriculum around how to make use of Teams for student engagement and interaction, connect remote and onsite learners and instructors, and support that all-important collaboration,” James says.

Evolved learning with Microsoft Teams

Dr. Jean Engohang-Ndong is among those who are high on the Teams comfort spectrum. Jean is Associate Professor of Biology. He has embraced Teams, and says that, “Teams is an opportunity to evolve learning to best meet an environment that constantly changes.” Jean points out that by forcing them off campus, the shutdowns threatened his students’ access to information. “Many students fall behind, not because they are not able to perform, but because they simply don't get the information they need in the ways they need to receive it.” He adds that such situations threaten equal opportunity for students, a key value for him and for the university at large.

But Teams, he says, has helped redress the balance. “Today, we are able to meet our students wherever they are, and I can restore equity in my classes.” In fact, he finds the technology provides improvements over conventional teaching practices, adding: “There are some courses I would definitely switch to fully remote in future, because I’ve seen my students reap many more benefits that way. Teams offers new opportunities that really make a difference in their learning process, and Teams-based instruction is definitely an option that we should keep very much alive for the future.”

A hybrid teaching environment with Teams Rooms

Locations including Teams Rooms at Kent State offer environments with a range of devices and services in configurations that best support specific learning scenarios. At Kent State, broadcast rooms focus on fully remote learning, while hybrid rooms offer a mix of in-person and remote attendance. Jean says, “I love the ability to switch between a whiteboard, a presentation, and myself perhaps doing a lab demo. I can zoom in and out, and I can engage individual students if I want to by name.”  He adds that remote students can sometimes become anxious that they may miss something. Others may be intimidated or otherwise unwilling to ask for clarification either in class or remotely. “But with a virtual interaction, the session is recorded and put into the learning management system, so students can easily review the information later. This increases student confidence; they have on-demand access to the information, and they have the tools to learn it.” Teams works with the Kent State Canvas learning management system to provide a more holistic combination of content, calendaring, and student progress tracking. All this backed up by one-on-one meetings, smaller seminars and breakout rooms, and office hours all conducted in Teams.

IT Director James says, “We also included Surface Hub in some of those spaces to provide unique ways for faculty to engage and highlight content. Surface Hub marries nicely with Teams in Teams Rooms, and faculty are digging in and really enjoy using the devices.” He’s found distinct advantages to both the fully remote and hybrid experience in Teams over purely in-person classrooms. “A hybrid meeting in Teams can be every bit as inclusive and effective as an in-person one. And more productive for students and educators, too, because they’re at the devices where they consume and create the content that they need for their class.” Chat sessions can happen at the same time. Queries and information shared. Notes taken and stored during the class along with referenced presentations.

A long-term advantage for remote and hybrid learning

CIO John agrees with Melody in viewing Teams as helping define the future direction of teaching and learning practice at Kent State. “We're grateful for what we can accomplish with Teams, and for Microsoft in continuing to enhance and grow the platform. In our journey as an institution, we have to draw on experience and expertise that can help us continually improve. In that way, we see the technology as a partner in our mission.”

Melody adds that the university has already made a natural transition to Teams—staff and students rely on it for a range of learning scenarios. “Teams is certainly helping in our mission. We believe students come first in all that we do, and with Teams, no student is left out, no student is unseen, and no student is unheard.”