This presentation is about why and how we integrated Microsoft Teams with Moodle

1. Integrating
Microsoft Teams
with Moodle

2. Importance of Classroom
Community
• Isolation leads to higher dropout rates
(Ali and T Smith, 2015)
• Community creates a better learning experience for
students (Wenger, 1998)
• There’s huge value in democratic discussion
• Strong need for Lecturer Presence
(Ladyshewsky, 2013)
• Importance of Social Presence (Garrison, 2000)

3. A single Community Platform
for all students and lecturers

4. Why Teams
Teams can be used as a single place for
communication
It can become a Community platform for
students
It offers opportunities for collaboration
for students
It’s FREE
Students already have Teams accounts
through their Institute Microsoft account
It’s scalable!

5. Why Moodle
Integration?
• Moodle is at the centre of our online
learning experience.
• Student record system (Banner) and Staff
Timetabling system (Syllabus+) are both
used to populate module enrolments in
Moodle.
• Moodle is the only system where staff and
students are enrolled in their discrete
modules for the academic year.
• In Teams terms, Moodle has the best data
on who should be a Team Owner and who
should be a Team Member

6. Moodle

7. So what do
we need?
We need to automate the creation of One Team
for each module in Moodle
We need give the lecturer "Owner" role on the
Team
Students will have "Member" role
Membership synchronised – students and
lecturers added and removed.

8. Integrating MS Teams with Moodle
• Consists of critical 3 plugins; Microsoft Office 365 Integration (local_o365),
OpenID Connect (auth_oidc) & Microsoft Block (block_microsoft)
• Very comprehensive documentation on Moodle.org that covers the integration
steps, https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Office365
• Very important! You will need to have admin access (or know someone who has)
to your Microsoft Azure tenancy to complete the integration.
• Tip! Complete in phases; start with OpenID Connect (authenticate Moodle users
against Office 365), then move onto Teams integration with your Moodle courses.
• Tip! Microsoft Block is useful as a signpost into other Office 365 services. Install
it!

9. OpenID Connect
• Provides a single sign-on authentication flow
against Azure Active Directory (and others).
• Can work in parallel with your
existing authentication methods. WIT still
supports LDAP and Manual logins.
• Your Moodle users are synced with
their Office 365 identities. A task in Moodle
can control this.
• Login flow (authorization request): Moodle →
Office 365 → Moodle
• Avoid 'Sorry, but we’re having trouble signing
you in' error by including your Office 365
tenant GUID in your 'Authorization Endpoint'
url.
https://login.microsoftonline.com/oauth2/authorize
should become
https://login.microsoftonline.com/00112233-4455-6677-8899-
a1b2c3d4e5f6/oauth2/authorize
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/find-your-office-365-tenant-id

10. Teams
• Teams Sync settings control how a Team gets created; 'disabled',
'customize' or 'all features enabled'.
• 'Customize' settings allows more control over the Teams that are
created; you can enable a Team for only selected courses.
• A course must have at least one teacher role assigned for a Team to
be created.
• As more people are added to a course, they will be automatically
added to the corresponding Team.
• Additional functionality exists; automated Bot & Teams Moodle app.

11. Thanks to...
•Our Computer Services team
•Bart Busschots in Maynooth
•Enovation

12. Thank You
Slides available on pete.ie/edtech
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