With the University System of New Hampshire’s contract with Zoom ending in the summer of 2024, a proposal is being made to switch to Microsoft Teams.
Teams is incorporated in the overall Microsoft Suite the school already has.
However, Alicia Medros, assistant vice president of teaching and learning technologies, said for many years, Teams was not up to par with Zoom, but now it is looking like it might be.
“We think we’ve reached a point … where it is now truly duplicative and it has the same functions and features as Zoom,” Medros said. “And so the time has come to see if we can gain some cost savings by reducing our spending on Zoom and moving more things into teams.” Enterprise Technology and Services (ET&S) hopes to have its proposal approved by USNH and campus leaderships by the end of January. This would allow a transition period for users to learn how Teams works before it is fully being used come the Fall 2024 semester, Medros said.
By using Teams, it provides the possibility for synergy with the greater Microsoft Suite that people could take advantage of, Elise Morrissette, IT group help desk manager, said.
Teams has the ability to be tied into people’s Sharepoint and Microsoft Groups.
“I can really see … the staff departments on campus really leveraging Teams,” Morrissette said.
As for the benefits of switching to Teams in the classroom, Medros said Teams does the main things Zoom does. Teams has the ability for breakout rooms and screen sharing PowerPoints. Additionally, she said Teams has a whiteboard feature, where if a professor is writing on the whiteboard, it has the ability to take those words written and put them on the screen to make it easier for people in the call to see.
The downside of switching to Teams is that video conferencing is almost synonymous with Zoom, Medros said.
“There is comfort in having Zoom and for users to be able to know that they can easily join and find out what’s going on,” she said. With that in mind, Medros said she does not expect Zoom to completely leave the university system, but rather play less of a role in everyday video conferencing, as it might be better to use Zoom for larger events.
She said Teams might not be the same as Zoom in areas like having multiple camera angles and having a lot of external people join the video conference.
ET&S previously held feedback sessions and an open survey to gather feedback and data on the matter.
Medros said she did not know how much would be saved by switching to teams.
Tim Bruns can be contacted at
tbruns@kscequinox.com
