Want to get more from Microsoft Teams in education? You’re not alone.
While Teams offers powerful tools for teaching, collaboration and communication, it can feel complex without the right setup, especially in busy schools and trusts.
This practical guide explores how to organise Teams into Class Teams, Subject Teams and Department Teams – and how Cloud Design Box helps make everything simpler, smarter and more connected.
Whether you’re a teacher, department head or school leader, you’ll learn how to use Teams to save time, support collaboration and stay focused on teaching and learning.
What’s more, Cloud Design Box Founder and CEO Tony Phillips has created this handy walk-through guide on how to structure Microsoft Teams for education:
Keep reading to discover:
What are Class Teams and how do they work?
Class Teams are your digital classroom.
This is where you connect with students, set assignments, give feedback and run live lessons.
It’s designed to enhance teaching and learning by bringing together students and their teachers in a secure, organised space. Everyone is connected, which improves communication and makes everyday learning, such as accessing resources and completing homework assignments, straightforward and stress free.
Teachers can even host virtual lessons and set up collaborative assignments where groups of students work together on their devices – remote or in the classroom.
With Cloud Design Box, each class has its own dedicated Team, and the Microsoft Teams class setup is fully automated and synced with your MIS. Membership is updated overnight, so if a student moves class, everything stays up to date, and no manual admin is required.
You could use a Class Team for:
- Collaborative learning, using tools like Class Notebook.
- Setting assignments and work you want to mark and assess.
- Track grades in your gradebook, which is built into Teams.
Everything is in one place, helping you stay organised and focus on teaching.
Using Subject Teams for planning and resource sharing
Subject Teams bring together all the teachers and support staff working in the same subject area, such as Geography, History or Physics.
Subject Teams are perfect for:
- Collaborative planning.
- Sharing resources.
- Avoiding duplication across classes.
Teachers can work together on shared documents, stored in a single location, so you’ve always got one ‘version of the truth’ and no one is duplicating work unnecessarily.
What’s more, your resources can be made instantly available to students via an extra tab in each Class Team, automatically provisioned by Cloud Design Box.
So, while you plan centrally in Subject Teams, your students access those same materials instantly in their Class Teams. There’s no need to re-upload or copy anything across.
Managing staff communication with Department Teams
Department Teams are for staff only, where multiple subjects come together under a department.
Department Teams are great for:
- Departmental meetings.
- Line management.
- CPD tracking.
- Appraisals.
This is a place where staff can collaborate in shared OneNote Notebooks or create channels when needed.
For example, you could have a Staff Notebook for line management. Each team member gets their own section, and only the Head of Department (Team owner) can see everything.
The result is a clear, secure space for managing staff development and departmental communication.
Communicate and share resources across your entire trust
If you’re part of a trust, Cloud Design Box gets even more powerful.
We create MAT-wide department teams for collaboration across all your schools.
These are brilliant for:
- MAT subject specialists.
- Staff who work across multiple sites.
- Sharing best practice.
- Standardising planning.
Even if you have a mixed estate of MIS platforms, we can automate everything and bring your teams together.
Teachers can collaborate, share resources and stay connected across multiple schools, no matter where they are geographically.
How Cloud Design Box simplifies Microsoft Teams in Education
If Teams feels overwhelming when you log in, Cloud Design Box helps bring everything together into an easy-to-use and engaging SharePoint intranet.
It’s a personalised dashboard that brings up relevant content and communications to whoever is logged in.
Teachers can view and access all the classes they teach, Subject Teams and Department Teams.
Students can view the Class Teams and Subject Teams they’re enrolled in. It’s clean, intuitive and helps everyone focus on teaching and learning.
Bringing everyone together into one platform
Whatever your structure – single school or MAT – Cloud Design Box helps you manage Microsoft Teams automatically, saving time, reducing confusion and improving collaboration.
The setup described above creates one version of the truth, at a school level and trust level, making sure teachers can spend more time teaching, not doing admin.
Would you like help rolling Cloud Design Box out across your school or trust? Contact our team to learn more about how we can fast-track your digital strategy.
