It would be great if students could private message teachers, but NOT each other.
It would be great if students could private message teachers, but NOT each other.
Nick
shared this idea
Thank you for your feedback! Chat can be a powerful tool in educational settings, but we understand that in some environments chat can also come with student safety challenges. To assist schools where educator supervision in chats is desired, we have begun the roll out of our new Supervised Chat feature.
Supervised chat allows designated educators to initiate chats with students and blocks students from starting new chats unless an appropriate educator is present. When chat supervision is enabled, supervisors aren’t allowed to leave chats and other participants aren’t allowed to remove them, ensuring that chats involving students are properly supervised.
We are doing a gradual roll out of this feature so it may take a few weeks to get to your environment. We expect to be fully rolled out by the end of May 2021.
To learn more, please visit https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/supervise-chats-edu (admins) or https://support.microsoft.com/topic/supervised-chats-in-microsoft-teams-for-education-ad3aaafc-c85a-416f-95f9-d691f419cbb8 (end-users).
It’s important to note that this first version only enforces supervision on new chats. We are working on the next version, which will include enforcement on existing chats as well.
422 comments
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Chris
commented
This is fantastic, however I noticed a huge problem/loophole for our students. When in a private chat, they are able to add other students and users to that chat (using the add button) and then start conversations with anyone they add into the chat. The full permission (teacher) would obviously see this, however this something that needs to be addressed. Students should not be able to add others into chats, at least not other restricted permission (student) users.
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Anonymous
commented
This is great and will be a much desired and welcome feature. An addition to this would be able to create groups to which we could create segregate groups of people (as a school we might want kids only talking to specific kids, etc.). I know there is information barriers but I'm not sure that is as flexible and it is a pretty rudimentary process (only PowerShell), and might not be able to be as refined as groups.
Chris
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Peter Uusitalo
commented
I assume that Microsoft makes difference between teachers and students and their level of authority in Teams(chat)? Teachers should be allowed to start chats with other teachers as well as students. They should also have the authority to allow students to have individual chats between other students, under the teachers supervision and management, for example the possibility to delete a chat. Students should not have the possibility to start private chats with other students(=on the same authoritylevel), only with the authoritylevel above - the teachers. This change in functionality in Teams would remove a lot of spamming and bullying that is present today. /Peter Uusitalo, Örnässkolan n Luleå, Sweden
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Tammi cooke
commented
yes! We need this in the worst way!
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Gyrfalcon
commented
Recently my niece was in a foster care situation. The foster parent restricted her communication, blocked access to phone, and then verbally abused her and threatened to take her away and would not tell her where. She was terrified. She used her access at school -- her only way to communicate with the outside world -- to message another student, so that person contacted her family member (prospective guardian), who contacted her guardian ad litem who contacted CPS who contacted the judge -- who removed her from the abusive situation on an emergency basis. PLEASE don't restrict the free speech of students. Vulnerable students in a remote situation NEED this help line to their peers. Kids are VERY VULNERABLE when they are denied access to the outside world and do schoolwork in a remote situation. Students trust other students but sometimes not teachers. Teachers are "official". Other students represent a less scary way to get a message out through a "safe" channel. There is much more to this story. It was BAD. The ability to communicate with other students saved one child. Social Connectedness is a measure of a student's emotional health. The more isolated the child, the more at risk that child is.
If teachers "see" student chats, then I don't know if this child would have trusted The System enough to get her message out. Children in CPS (there are A LOT OF THEM in schools) don't trust easily.
With regard to the Key Issues, that 'rubbish" is children engaging in social activity. It is an important part of development, and is even more critical during the pandemic and remote settings. There must be a balance of children feeling "safe" to speak to other kids without adults inserting themselves, and a mechanism for identifying bullying behavior. I would suggest self moderation. Give kids a voting button that allows them to report bullying behavior. Teachers can review reported posts. AI could probably review 90% of them and recommend actions. Chat could be turned off during tests.
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Anonymous
commented
Summary of key issues schools are facing:
1) Students are using teams private chat to conduct hate speech/bullying.
How Supervised chat may help to solve this issue: Supervised chat allows teachers to "see" the chat between students and allows them to block communication between certain students as well as to ensure a safe learning environment. However as many of you have pointed out, the bullies can still utilize social media and use anonymous accounts to do the latter. Schools should provide their assistance to the students if they find out that they are a victim of cyberbully.
Side note: Should this featured be "active", students should receive a warning that their private chat is being supervised, teachers should respect student's privacy as there is a reason they call it a private chat.
2) Students are using private chat to cheat during exams.
How supervised chat can solve the issue: It blocks communication between students during the test period.
My Opinion: This is still acceptable, but teachers should be given a choice when to ON the feature. Other than that not much of an issue.
3) The students are using private chat to talk "rubbish" and are not focusing on their studies.
How this feature might solve the issue: similar to point 2, it blocks students-to-students communication while allowing student-to-teacher communication.
My Opinion: I believe students should be responsible for their own learning, this feature will not help the student long term. I can still understand why some school might need this feature eg K-12 students/elementary school students. For older students, Student to student communication also plays a part in learning eg. discussing homework and assignments. Instead, teachers can host weekly study session that help to facilitate learning. I understand why some schools might want to have this feature, eg during lectures. test, examination. Hence I feel that the feature should only be only available under certain conditions eg during a meeting and not ON permanently. As a student, I find the chat very useful, especially during exam periods or just to be up-to-date with the latest campus information. I feel that many people in the chat here also have similar views which is evident that the feature should be an active feature and not a passive feature. Besides, there are many other platforms where students can communicate eg. Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Messanger, Skype, Line; just to name a few.
I have just summarized the points that many people have pointed out, hope that it is easier for viewers to understand why there's so much controversy around this feature.
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Steven
commented
Glad to see this in testing now. Hope to see it soon.
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Monica
commented
My district is piloting this and it is OBNOXIOUS having students blowing up my private chat while I'm trying to teach. If students need a simpler way to contact their teacher ok, but it needs to be routed to my email inbox. If they abuse it or are saying inappropriate things to me, I need the power to turn it off just like I can in the group chat.
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Ana Egna
commented
This is one of the worst ideas I've seen today. Students can't get a good learning experience without being able to chat with each other, what's the point of school if you can't enjoy it? A better alternative would be to ALLOW them to chat with each other, but the teacher can monitor what happens like in a real classroom, therefore keeping everyone on task. Students can't learn in a place that isn't enjoyable.
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Nestor
commented
As we are still waiting for this feature. It should be mandatory, for Teachers & Students to communicate in Teams privately. For safety, sharing documents is very important but not doing it in a Team. PRIVATELY!
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Anonymous
commented
Not allowing students to talk to one another is one of the worst ideas I've seen over here. Granted, students chatting amongst themselves during an ongoing class is not ideal, and there could be some possible tweaks to that. However, not being able to message one another at other times is a truly terrible thing. These messages are some of the only ways a student can interact with classmates outside of meets, besides the Teams calls, and let's face it, as a student, I doubt too many people use it to talk to their classmates. Even if they do, having to call a peer to discuss trivial issues would be extremely counter productive.
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Rick
commented
You do know there is like 300 other programs you can use to talk to each other. Cancelling this option doesn't do anything special. If you try and prevent someone from doing something he will find a way around it. It can be as simple as opening facebook and chatting. Basically removing this option will move your students to facebook. It will be your own fault your students will be on facebook.
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Anonymous
commented
You guys just want to get students suffer, and yes i agree that students shouldnt chat between classes but just chill, this is a school not a tution class where students just come to study and do that, teams is a virtual school, and everyone should have the right to talk to each other as thats what makes it a school. If you guys post things like this you people should be isolated and your mouth shut.
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Anonymous
commented
This seems like a very conservative thing to do. Definitely should not be a priority. There are so many actually important features that should be implemented first.
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LunAAA! LOOK OUT!
commented
It would be useful if it could be on a timer like Christmas lights. When you are on a meeting, chatting anyone but the the people in your class is prohibited, but once you and your buddies are all free after their meetings, they can all chat and have fun! Kids who don't have phones use teams as the only way to talk to their friends, it would be a jerk move to take that away.
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ahmad ghibeh
commented
no i sometimes help some of my friends who dont know how to solve some questions and its important if i miss some subjects i ask them what we took
so keep it like this and dont change anything please
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Anonymous
commented
As a teacher, I want to have the ability to decide when students can chat with other or not. It would be helpful if in making that choice it did not impact if I, as their teacher, can chat with them as well. This should be a TEACHER choice not an IT choice.
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Kim Rogan
commented
As a teacher, I would like to have the ability to decide when I want students to be able to chat with one another and when I don't. This should be a TEACHER choice, NOT and IT choice!
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Anonymous
commented
As a teacher, I would like to have the ability to decide when I want students to be able to chat with one another and when I don't. This should be a TEACHER choice, NOT and IT choice!
I would also want students to be able to chat with teachers.
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Bobby K
commented
Any updates for this. Our teachers are requesting it.