Integrating Microsoft Teams into Canvas: A Win-Win for Students and Professors

Too often, online courses struggle with communication that feels slow and one-sided. Students swap ideas in discussion boards, but collaboration stops there. Integrating Microsoft Teams into Canvas changes that. It brings real-time conversation, file-sharing, and group spaces directly into the LMS–helping students connect more naturally and giving instructors new ways to guide and engage. This integration not only boosts collaboration, it also provides more opportunities for Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) between students and instructors—structured, faculty-initiated engagement that is required in online courses under federal guidelines.

Seamless Collaboration Across Projects and Courses

Integrating Teams into Canvas ensures that group work and peer review move beyond static discussion boards into dynamic, asynchronous interactions. Students can download the app on their mobile devices, which allows them to have more consistent and real-time access to the comments and work shared by their peers. Teams allows for:

Dedicated channels for individual projects or study groups

Tagging teammates so each member of a channel knows when they are needed

File sharing by both team members and instructors

This unified workspace helps teams stay organized, accountable, and focused on shared learning outcomes. Teams has both course-level and group-level integrations. This allows instructors flexibility in how they would like to use the app. These different levels allow Teams to be used for the entire course or just for specific group projects (or both). Regardless of the level of integration and use, instructors can see how students are collaborating and completing a task or group assignment. This gives them a space to quickly jump in if students are struggling or off track.

Enhanced Communication and Community Building

Canvas announcements and emails can feel one-sided; within Teams, conversations become two-way forums where ideas flow instantly. Notifications appear directly inside Canvas (and on mobile devices if students/instructors allow), ensuring students never miss critical updates. Meanwhile, professors can host Q&A chats without scheduling hurdles by simply creating a channel in Teams. The fluid interaction nurtures a vibrant learning community, fostering peer support and timely faculty feedback. Additionally, this allows instructors to meet their Regular and Substantive Interaction goals, nurtures a collaborative online community and directly addresses the Ecampus Essentials standard of requiring all three forms (student–student, student–instructor, student–content) of interaction and engagement in a classroom.

Easy Oversight for Seeking Solutions Courses

One of the new CoreEd (Core Education is OSU’s state-of-the-art, 21st-century-focused general education program) categories being implemented this year include the Seeking Solutions courses. These courses require students to work in interdisciplinary groups and “wrestle with complex, multifaceted problems, and evaluate potential solutions from multiple points of view” (from the Seeking Solutions OSU page). This necessitates that students complete group assignments and projects while instructors mentor and monitor these groups individually.

With a fully asynchronous OSU Ecampus course, this can be difficult. One way this can be accomplished is through Teams channels. If each group has its own Teams channel and the instructor requires that they use Teams to communicate and collaborate for their project, then instructors can use this space to share resources, mentor the students, and facilitate hard conversations.

Conclusion

Integrating Microsoft Teams into Canvas reshapes the university experience by uniting collaboration and communication within a single resource. Students benefit from real-time teamwork features and greater access to their instructors, while professors enjoy streamlined group work oversight and the ability to intervene whenever necessary. Adopting this integrated approach not only enhances the quality of instruction but also fosters a more engaged and connected learning community. For more information on how to integrate Teams into your Canvas site, read the Canvas: Create linked Teams from Canvas page.