If you want students to record the results of their groupwork discussions or collaboratively produce ideas and visual representations within a Teams teaching session, the whiteboard is a useful tool.

How to access the whiteboard

There’s a whiteboard available in every Teams teaching session that offers a blank canvas for you and your students to draw and write on. It’s really easy to launch the whiteboard within the session – you just go to the share content button in the top toolbar and select whiteboard from the sharing options displayed.

Enabling collaboration

The whiteboard will be displayed in the centre of the Teams meeting window, You can select whether you want students to be able to ‘collaborate’ on the whiteboard. You can turn the ability for students to edit the whiteboard on and off during the session – maybe you want to allow them to edit for 10 minutes but then ‘lock’ the whiteboard so that you can review it.

Tools for adding content to the whiteboard

• Pens for drawing and freehand writing with the ability to vary colour and thickness.
• An eraser
• Type basic text  – you can change the colour of the text.
• Insert a coloured ‘post it’ note to type or draw onto or
• Add a grid of notes to organise inputs
• Insert your images and add shapes.
• Insert templates for brainstorming, problem solving, reflection and many others.

Prepare the whiteboard ahead of a meeting

If you want to to put some content onto the whiteboard ahead of your session ready for students to add to and annotate, you can access the whiteboard from the meeting details page from your Teams calendar. When you launch the whiteboard in the meeting, your prepared content will appear.

Access the whiteboard after a meeting

Everything you produce on a whiteboard can be accessed after the meeting. Either open the meeting from your Teams calendar and go to the whiteboard tab, or access the  whiteboard tab from the meeting chat.

Use whiteboard in breakout rooms

The whiteboard is available for students to use in breakout rooms. Each room will have a separate whiteboard. The whiteboard will be accessible by students in the room, and the meeting organiser, after the session.

Have a go…

If you want to experiment with the whiteboard outside of a meeting you can also access it directly from DMU Connect: