Keep using class teams from the previous year ("two-year class teams")

Introduction

Schools and colleges often have courses which run across several years. These might be a GCSE Mathematics course at KS4, an A-level History course at KS5, or a BTEC Digital Media course at college. In this type of course, students may be assessed through examinations at the end of one or both years, and will often also be required to hand in coursework throughout the multi-year period. Most courses of this nature span two years. Modules of work are often separated across each year of the course, though there will be times when a project will span both years.

Our support desk is sometimes asked whether the same class teams could be allowed to persist across both years of the course. The intention is usually for learning resources to be available to students across the whole period, and for student work from the first year to still be accessible to teachers and students in year two. 

Two-year class teams are not supported within our product because a) Most MIS do not record teaching sets with consistent IDs across academic years b) School Data Sync (SDS) is designed to create a new set of classes for each academic year.

This article will explore some of the reasons why two-year class teams are not the only way for learning to persist across multiple years, and how starting a new class team for each academic year can reduce clutter for staff and students.

Centralising learning resources

One reason teachers sometimes ask for class teams to last two years is to avoid having to copy all of their teaching resources into the new team. But in our centralised subject model, resources are stored in a permanent place outside of the class teams. This saves teachers time in terms of not having to copy resources from year to year. There is also the advantage that teachers in the same department can share resources with each other, saving each teacher from re-inventing the wheel. This also allows Heads of Department to manage the quality of all resources used for teaching and learning.

Centralised Resources in SharePoint | Student Subject Resources (video)

How teachers can save time creating learning resources with Microsoft 365 (article)

Accessing archived class teams

Teams from previous years may contain discussions in channels, old assignments, and work in Student Work Folders. Using our Class Dashboard, teachers and students can visit archived class teams.

Accessing archived class team (YouTube)

Copying selected student work into the new class team

Accessing work from the previous year (video for students)

Moving coursework to a new class team (video for students)

What if teachers just unarchive the old class team?

Teachers remain owners of their class teams from year-to-year, so they are able to restore/unarchive them through the Teams interface. However, any class team which is manually restored would not be supported by Cloud Design Box, as it would no longer be connected to the MIS data. The teacher would have to manage team membership, etc, manually. We strongly discourage doing this.