How to stop Teams bombing

I had a question reach me indirectly from a teacher that had started using Microsoft Teams with their classes for distance learning during the Covid-19 school closures here in the UK and around the world.

They were finding that what had started as a great tool was now becoming somewhat chaotic as some of the kids had figured out they could use the meeting attendees list in a Teams meeting to mute the teacher, or to randomly throw other pupils out of the lesson. Teams is a new medium and lots of people are using for the first time under duress, it’s perhaps not surprising that there is some resistance and high-jinks going on.

In the media there are also stories appearing about ‘zoom-bombing’ where people have joined public meetings on Zoom then shared unsavoury content for all to see, hopefully this would be less likely in an educational environment, but some of the stories I’ve heard from my sons’ school making me think it’s just a matter of time.

In Teams these risks are easy to fix using the Attendee and Presenter roles. If you can make your pupils an Attendee they can’t mute other people, can’t remove people from the meeting, and can’t share their screens. I’ve put together a short video to show a full walkthrough of how to use this feature.