Virtual Graduations with Microsoft Teams Live Events
The current COVID-19 pandemic has hugely impacted educational organisations across the UK – from widespread school closures to large gatherings, such as graduations, being cancelled. With social distancing and restrictions still in place, proceeding with a ‘normal’ graduation for students won’t be possible. However, by embracing the opportunities technology can provide, your school, college or university can still celebrate its graduates with a virtual graduation through Microsoft Teams live events.
What are Teams live events?
Teams live events gives you the ability to broadcast to a large audience of up to 20,000 people. Live events are perfect for when the presenters are leading the interaction and the primary focus for the audience is to view the content being shared by the presenters. However, participants can still interact with the presenters using a moderated Q&A section.
Why Microsoft Teams live event for your graduation?
Ritsumeikan Primary School in Japan was affected by school closures during the pandemic, like many around the world. Therefore, when they were wanting to go ahead with their school’s graduation, the number of attendees had to be limited.
Due to limitation on the number of physical attendees, the primary school hosted its graduation ceremony on 14 March with only its graduating students and teachers. However, by using Microsoft Teams live events, the school was able to successfully broadcast the ceremony to more than 220 parents and relatives.
Ritsumeikan Primary School was able to provide a dedicated URL link for all attendees to view the live stream remotely, on their computer or smartphone, without having to log in anywhere or have any existing accounts or licences. The entire process – from decision to deployment – took only six days to organize and implement. Two cameras were used – one at the back of the hall and another on stage – to film the ceremony from different angles.
This is just one example of how easy and effective Microsoft Teams live events can be for your organisation, ensuring your students are able to be recognised for their achievements, without the pandemic restrictions preventing it from taking place.
Microsoft Teams live events can also be a useful tool for remote learning, as the education sector adapts to a new normal, where some students may be learning in the classroom and others from home. With Teams live events, students who may be learning remotely can have the ability to watch the live lesson, therefore enabling teachers to address their entire classroom even if they’re not all physically present. Students can then ask questions using the Q&A panel and engage with their teacher. Read our blog post for more tips on remote learning with Teams.
The Microsoft Teams Live Event feature is available for all educational organisations with A3 or A5 licences for Office 365 Education. If you have any questions about your licence or you’d like to find out more about Teams live events – contact Phoenix today. One of our Microsoft specialists will then get in touch to answer any questions and discuss your requirements. You can also find out more about Teams live events and how it works by reading this blog post.
