What’s New in Microsoft Teams for Students & Educators

As the new school year gets underway, Microsoft technology is available to guarantee that everyone can learn and accomplish outstanding work, regardless of what that may be.

Enhance the wider student experience and make learning accessible for all with Microsoft 365.

Here are the 6 new updates in Microsoft Teams for students & educators…

Reflect is now a featured tab in a class team

Microsoft recently upgraded Reflect so that it now appears as a prominent tab in each of your classes, just like Assignments or Grades, to aid in fostering social emotional learning in your classroom.

With this update Microsoft also included:

1. The capacity to design unique queries
2. The ability to examine prior check-ins from Teams and the Class Notebook with improved navigation.
3. Together view – helping students build empathy with a friendly data view of reported Feelings Monsters.

Get started with the updated version of Reflect in Teams.

When: Available Now

What’s New in Assignments and Grades

Developments to Assignments and Grade Reports
Microsoft has been putting up a lot of effort to showcase student learning data in Assignments and Grade Reports in a richer, more educational, and more user-friendly style. Educators can now access updated Assignments and Grade Reports, you now get:

1. More data –Access and analyse unified data on group assignment information, progress status, grade trends, categories, and, soon, rubrics and resource usage statistics.
2. More granularity –View comparisons to the class average and statistics pertaining to a single student or assignment by drilling down from the class overview.
3. An improved, actionable experience –Use color-coding and in-context action to move between reports, start dialogues with students, and go directly to the Assignments and Grades apps for the next step to quickly discover student needs.

With the enhanced capability to view data as it pertains to a specific student or task, Education Insights saves you time by presenting data that you can process, directly interact with your students, and transform into more efficient teaching methods.

Learn more about these new enhancements here.

When: Available Now

Summary Average Grade for Teachers

You have access to a list of all assignments and student grades for each course in the Gradebook for Assignments. Microsoft has since added an average grade for each assignment, student, and overall class view. As a teacher, you can alter the date filter to view the most recent average grades for the chosen time frame.

When: Rolling out now

Adding Images in Assignment Instructions

On both mobile and desktop, you may now include images and animated GIFs in your assignment instructions to help students comprehend them better.

When: Rolling out now

Students can increase their reading fluency with the use of new Reading Progress tools.

Challenging Words assignment improvements
Make a demanding task out of the most difficult words to further the learning of your students.

You may view the most often missed words by students in Reading Progress reports in Insights, as well as words from the passage and additional challenge words that have been suggested based on data from students who have similar reading difficulties.

The passage can then be modified by the instructor and given to a single student, a group of students with similar reading abilities, or the whole class.

When: Available now

Multi-select of words in Teacher Review

You will save time by having the opportunity to select several words to modify the error category or designate in bulk.

To manage many words at once, choose any word, then select multiple words from the dropdown menu under text tools.

When: Available Now

Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams for Students and Educators? Send us an email at [email protected] or complete the form below if you enjoyed this article and would want to learn more about how to use Microsoft Teams for students or to have training conducted at your school, university, or organisation.