Students currently accessing online courses through Microsoft (MS) Teams can expect to lose access to class materials shortly after the course is completed.

This past academic term, many of Brock’s online courses were facilitated through the collaboration software MS Teams. Instructors used a self-serve provisional tool to create ‘teams’ within MS Teams where they could host live classes; share important course documents, such as syllabi, lecture notes and videos; and encourage discussion and collaboration amongst classmates using ‘channels.’

Most ‘teams’ sites created for course delivery are scheduled to go into archival mode 15 days after the last date affiliated with the course — most often, a course’s final exam. When this happens, students will have limited read-only access to course materials in the ‘teams’ site and will not be able to post comments or questions to discussion channels. The ‘teams’ site will be listed under the ‘hidden’ subheading in the ‘teams’ menu.

Thirty days after the course is completed, students will no longer have any access to the ‘teams’ site. From a student’s perspective, the ‘teams’ course site will be completely removed from MS Teams.

Students will continue to have access to the MS Teams software, just not their courses’ ‘teams’ sites within MS Teams. Registered students will be able to continue using the collaboration tool to connect with professors and fellow students via the ‘chat’ private and group messaging as well as virtual meetings.

Instructors will continue to have access to course delivery materials in their course ‘teams’ sites within MS Teams, but will experience the site going into archival mode 15 days after the course is completed. Courses will not be removed from instructors’ MS Teams accounts after 30 days as they are with student access.

Instructors can un-archive their ‘teams’ sites through MS Teams. Instructors interested in extending the default archival and expiry dates of the course ‘teams’ sites can request a change by emailing the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation at edtech@brocku.ca

Students and instructors should be familiar with the expiry of courses via MS Teams. Fall Term course ‘teams’ sites expired 30 days after the course was completed. ‘Teams’ sites transferring to an archival mode 15 days after course completion, however, is new for the Winter Term.

Student access to course sites in Brock’s learning management system, Sakai, can be less predictable. In both cases instructors can tailor access as needed.

Students who require extended access to course materials are asked to connect directly with their professor via email or MS Teams chat.