How to pin a video stream for all students in Microsoft Teams meetings

There have been lots of great updates to Microsoft Teams video meetings in the last few weeks, but one thing still outstanding is the ability for a teacher to pin their own video stream, or the video of another, for all meeting participants.

Currently, users can pin a participant’s video to highlight it for themselves, but this doesn’t affect other users. But a new feature, scheduled to be released in September, will allow a teacher, or the meeting organiser, to pin a video stream for all participants and make sure that they are the focus of the lesson.

At the moment, it’s possible for the teacher’s video to be lost within the grid of students, of even disappear off screen. This is an increasing problem now that you can have up to 49 students on-screen at once. Once this new feature has been released a teacher will be able to make sure that students are focused on the lesson rather than getting distracted by other students.

Microsoft says:

We are delivering the ability for presenters to lock on an individual video feed for all attendees to see during a Teams meeting. Once selected, the individual identified as the spotlight will be the main video shown to all participants. This applies to PC, Mac, mobile, and Microsoft Teams room systems.