Below you can find essential information about this year’s rollover of LearnZone and Teams. This will take place during CPD week, from Wednesday, 1st to Friday, 3rd July, to minimise disruption to teaching.
Why we rollover
LearnZone and Teams both go through the annual rollover process to:
- Provide continuity for our learners.
- Provide a repository of assessments in line with awarding bodies’ requirements.
- Clean our data to meet GDPR responsibilities.
- Update and improve functionality and security.
- Minimise the costs of subscriptions such as Turnitin.
Based on the learning platform your department uses, please read all of the information on either LearnZone or Teams.
LearnZone
This year, essential maintenance will be carried out on LearnZone to align with organisational requirements and cybersecurity protocols, helping to ensure improved continuity of service for both staff and students.
Both HE and FE platforms will be unavailable for the three full days (1st – 3rd July). During this time, staff and students will not be able to access LearnZone, so please plan accordingly.
After rollover this year, HE LearnZone staff preparing for the 2026/27 academic year will be able to edit the new course pages immediately. Courses that continue past rollover (for example, during the summer) will now need to be accessed from the 25/26 Courses (tile) category.
Next Steps
Following rollover, you will need to update course pages for the new academic year. Guidance on what to include is available in the Best Practice for LearnZone.
- New Turnitin assignments must be created, as these are not carried over during rollover. However, both staff and students will retain read-only access to submissions from the 2025/26 academic year.
- Please continue to check that all resources meet accessibility legislation. If a document is not accessible, it should be hidden until it has been reviewed or removed from the site. You can learn more by completing our Accessibility Essentials training on StaffZone or by visiting our accessibility blogs.
- Students will be automatically enrolled on course pages, units, or modules when visiting them until the end of September. After this period, enrolments must be managed manually by staff.
Microsoft Teams
During rollover, all Teams sites used for teaching will be automatically archived. This ensures students are not accessing Teams sites unsupervised, while preserving the Team and any Turnitin submissions for future reference.
Staff and students will still be able to access archived Teams from “Your Teams and Channels” in read-only mode.
It is important to note that Microsoft Teams will remain live and accessible during this time.
Next Steps
Following rollover, you will need to create new Teams sites for the upcoming academic year. Guidance on what to include can be found in the Best Practice for Microsoft Teams.
- Create new Teams by completing the form found on the Staff Dashboard. Teams will be set up automatically based on the information provided. Please allow a few minutes for the Team to be created.
- New Turnitin assignments must be created. However, both staff and students will retain read-only access to submissions from the 2025/26 academic year within archived Teams.
- Copy resources from archived Teams to your new Team sites by adding a new module to Classwork and selecting Reuse from existing.
- Please continue to check that all resources meet accessibility legislation. If a document is not accessible, it should not be uploaded or shared through Teams. You can learn more by completing our Accessibility Essentials training on StaffZone or by visiting our accessibility blogs.
- Teams sites that span across multiple academic years can be restored by their owners if required. Guidance is available in our Microsoft Teams for Teaching and Learning training.
Help and Support
As always, contact the Digital Learning Team for more information, guidance, and support. You can also book a coaching session here: Digital Learning Coaching.