1. There are currently 2 types of SharePoint site, Communication and Team.
2. Communication sites are used to convey information to a wide audience, they are rarely used for collaboration. These are broadly equivalent to the old intranet.soton.ac.uk
   Communication sites cannot (at present) be used for external collaboration), but they can be used for securing access to a large (automatically updated) group of people e.g. all staff in a faculty.
   
3. Team sites are used for collaborative working, they are broadly equivalent to groupsite.soton.ac.uk
   These can be used for working with people outside the University (external collaborators), but membership is done by adding individuals manually (thus it's impractical to use them for large groups).
   
4. At present there is a sub-type of site called a 'Committee', when you select a Team site you can optionally choose this. A 'Committee' site is the same as a Team site except it also has a calendar added to it and any documents created in the main document library can be associated to events in that calendar and also be assigned a 'type' (currently, Agenda, Minutes, Report, Paper).
5. If you're still unsure which site will meet your needs or if you think a new template would be beneficial, please contact Serviceline.

Additional resources to help you make the most of SharePoint Online

1. Linkedin Learning
2. Microsoft Training Center