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Zoom or Teams?

NEW: A vision for education and skills at Newcastle University: Education for Life 2030+

Zoom or Teams?

Zoom and Teams are the primary tools for online meetings and online teaching sessions. Functionally, there are now few differences between these two tools as can be seen from the comparison below.

Features of Zoom and Teams

Students and staff have the ability to meet online using Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Teams is a collaboration platform which offers additional video calling functionality, whereas Zoom is a dedicated video calling application. 

For online synchronous sessions, both Teams and Zoom have similar functionality as shown below. If participants have poor connectivity, they can join Zoom meetings from a phone line – this option is not available on Teams.

 

Zoom

Teams

Scheduling meetings in Canvas

Requires manual setup (not linked to timetable). See Scheduling Synchronous Sessions.

Requires manual setup (not linked to timetable). See Scheduling Synchronous Sessions.

Maximum number of video screens visible at a time.

7x7 (49)

7x7 (49)

Breakout rooms

Yes. Can be pre-assigned or assigned in a meeting (note: the maximum number of breakout rooms you can have is dictated by the number of participants in your meeting).

Yes. Support for up to 50 breakout rooms in a single meeting with up to 350 attendees. Teams Breakout Rooms (sharepoint.com).

Polls

Yes

Yes

Attendance list

Yes

Yes

Maximum number of participants

300

1000

Mute attendees

Yes

Yes

Control who can screenshare/attendee video/audio

Yes

Yes

Support screen sharing/slide sharing

Yes

Yes

Share multiple screens at once

Yes

No

Join from a phone line (no internet connection)

Yes

Yes

Live captions

Yes in the main meeting, not in breakout rooms.

Yes

Recording meetings

Yes - to Zoom cloud or local drive – and then share

Yes - recordings are saved to Microsoft Stream – share via class Teams or by adjusting permissions.

Implications for students on low bandwidth

Accessing the recording post-event remains the most reliable method of engaging with the content.

Accessing the recording post-event remains the most reliable method of engaging with the content.


See also