Do you want to allow students to arrange a tutorial with you or members of your team? Then Office 365 Bookings could be a solution for you.
Microsoft’s Office 365 Bookings is an online tool available to NTU Staff, as part of the Office 365 suite of tools (you can request Bookings from IS if it isn’t available). It works in tandem with your Outlook calendar, and can allow students to book specified appointments with you or your “team” whenever there’s space in your Calendar.
You can add the type of event you’d like to be available to students, customise the booking process, such as lead time, duration and staff availability, and then publish the web page for students to access (or embed the booking form in a NOW Learning Room).
Bookings is currently being used in the School of Arts and Humanities by David Mann (Senior Lecturer for Academic English) to organise one-to-one appointments with students and his team:
MS Bookings has provided us with a simple and effective way for students without regular Academic English workshops to book face-to-face tutorials with members of our team. The ability to synchronise a Bookings calendar with our Outlook calendars has been particularly useful.
Using Bookings as part of the Office 365 suite, means that both you and your students are notified by email and events are added to your calendar. This also helps if an appointment has to be cancelled, or if you’re unavailable for potential bookings because of a clash in your schedule.
Here’s a typical student view of a Booking page displaying the simple uncluttered interface:
You can also use Bookings to have have multiple Bookings sites, each with their own page and customised settings, you just have to remember what each is called as you can only view one at a time!!
For further information about Bookings, contact LTSU or take a look at Microsoft Bookings Online Support.
David Jeckells
Learning Technologies Manager
Learning and Teaching Support Unit (LTSU)
School of Arts & Humanities – Nottingham Trent University
