Welcome to our update for Microsoft Education and our special Bett 2024 edition! The Bett conference takes place in London during the week of January 24th – January 26th, and Microsoft Education has a bunch of exciting updates to share! For our full Bett 2024 schedule of sessions and live classroom events, please visit and download our Microsoft Bett 2024 schedule PDF.
January Bett Topics:
2. Teams EDU updates, including AI
3. Loop
5. Reflect
6. OneNote EDU
1. Reading Coach
Reading Coach in Microsoft Teams was already providing learners with personalized reading practice, and instant feedback about pronunciation and fluency, while also giving insights back to educators. Today, we are announcing Reading Coach as a standalone app that also provides personalized, engaging, consistent, and independent reading fluency practice. It is available for free as a Windows application and a web app to use in the classroom or at home with a Microsoft account.
Available now for use at home: Reading Coach is now available in public preview to use at home. To get started, sign-up at https://coach.microsoft.com
Reading Coach allows learners to create unique AI-generated stories by choosing characters and settings from a curated collection of options. The AI generated story is moderated for content quality, safety and age appropriateness following Microsoft’s Responsible AI guidelines. Learners read the story in the Immersive Reader accessible reading surface that has been shown to especially support struggling readers.
As learners read the story out aloud, speech-to-text artificial intelligence analyzes their reading fluency, detects words they find challenging, and records the readers’ accuracy, speed and time spent reading. Readers get to choose what happens in each story chapter, charting their own reading journey through the story. Words they found challenging in the previous chapter are automatically included in the next chapter. This makes the practice immediately adaptive. Readers also get fluency coaching on the words they found challenging after each story chapter. Effort-focused badges, unlocking new characters and settings for the next story keeps learner engaged in the flow of reading motivating even reluctant readers.
Available in February 2024 for use in school: IT Administrators can sign-up for public preview at https://aka.ms/readingcoachschoolsignup. Educators can sign-up for the Reading Coach educator community at https://aka.ms/readingcoach-educatorcommunity.
Learn more about how Reading Coach works on the support documentation pages.
2. Microsoft Teams for Education updates
Using generative AI to create rubrics in Assignments
Rubrics are a useful tool to communicate the expectations for the assignments to the students, and to provide an easy and effective way for the educator to grade and give specific feedback to the students. However, creating detailed rubrics can take a lot of time. With generative AI integrated into Assignments, you just need to enter what you want the rubric to assess, and Assignments will suggest criteria for you and complete the rubric for you. You have the control as the educator, and you can add more levels or criteria and let AI fill out a first draft for you.
When: Private Preview targeted for Jan
Using generative AI to create instructions in Assignments
We have been working on ways to save time for educators by improving our products with AI. We are doing this first for Classwork, Assignments and Reading Progress. These features are all designed to fit the needs of the educators, save time for educators, and always let the educator decide on the final content. For Assignments Instructions, we are examining the information and giving multiple suggestions for how to enrich the content, such as adding more details, adding learning objectives, emphasizing key concept and even making your assignments more interesting. The educator always has the choice and can generate different options, and after the content is created, can always make further edits and updates to the content.
When: Private Preview targeted for Jan
Using generative AI to create modules in Classwork
Classwork is a new app in Teams that helps you manage your curriculum and lets educators create and organize class resources such as Assignments, Files, Links, Channels, Class Notebook pages, and more. With AI enabled Classwork module generation, educators can get assistance creating a course outline and drafting modules and descriptions based on the subject, student grade level, and class learning objectives. The educator is always in the driver’s seat and can choose to edit, delete, or regenerate modules before adding them to Classwork.
When: Private Preview targeted for Feb
Admin Controls for generative AI features
The IT Administrators can control the educators’ access to these generative AI features. A new control will be available in the Institute settings tab under Education Section of the Teams admin center.
Check-in with students using Reflect as they complete their assignment
Educators want to know how students feel about the work they do. They may have different emotions, such as stress, happiness, or engagement when they deal with schoolwork. We have now introduced a feature that lets educators enable Reflect Check-in on an assignment. So, when students submit their work, they will be automatically asked how they felt about the assignments. The educator can see the students’ responses directly inside the Assignments Grading experience, to track the changes over time for a student and how the whole class felt about the assignment in the together view.
When: Rolling out in January
Reuse of Modules
Available now, you can now reuse your modules between Class Teams. Whether you are looking to teach the same class again, are teaching multiple instances of a class, or want to hand off curriculum to another educator, Classwork will allow you to reuse content including Assignments, Files, and Links easily. Simply make sure you are the owner of the Class Team the content is coming from, and then click “Reuse from existing” in the new Team.
Note: Support for Class Notebook and Channel resources is coming soon. Learn more at https://aka.ms/ClassworkReuseSupport.
When: Available now
3. Loop App availability for Education customers
Microsoft Loop is a flexible, AI-powered collaboration app that can help you think, plan, and create together! We’re excited to share that Loop will be included in Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 plans, including Student Use Benefit users in early March. Office 365 A1 customers can create Loop workspaces and pages until June 30th, 2024. After this date, they will still have access to these existing workspaces and pages, however will need M365 A3/A5 license to create new ones.
Loop is made up of three key parts:
- Loop components: Portable pieces of content (like tables, checklists, or paragraphs) that sync across all the places they are shared. For example, you can start a list in a Loop component to gather student project ideas for the next unit. Share the component in an Outlook email, Teams chat or channel, Whiteboard, and Word for the web document. The list stays up to date wherever it has been shared! Watch this video to see components in action.
- Loop pages: Flexible canvases in the Loop app where you can bring together people and all your components, links, tasks, and data. Start a planning page for your next field trip where you can track schedules and to-dos. Easily share the page across apps with your fellow teachers to capture their ideas too. Check out this video on Loop pages and workspaces.
- Loop workspaces: Shared spaces that allow teachers and students to track everything important to a class project in one place. Students can work together on a class project, creating pages for each phase. They can include document links, record video of themselves, and co-author in real-time.
With Copilot in Loop you have a new classroom assistant that works side by side with you. It can save you time and energy by doing things like finding relevant documents for your Loop workspace, helping you generate and refine ideas, and keeping you focused and on track with automatically generated summaries of your class projects.
Watch this video to learn more about Microsoft Loop and try Loop today!
4. Microsoft Copilot expanded availability in Education
We’re thrilled to announce several expansions for education audiences. Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection will be available to all faculty and higher education students ages 18 and above. Microsoft Copilot is also now powered by GPT-4 Turbo and is available on both iOS and Android devices. And, Copilot for Microsoft 365 eligibility will now include Microsoft and Office 365 A3 or A5 education faculty and staff with no seat minimum requirement.
Our efforts are guided by our AI principles and Responsible AI Standard and build on decades of research on grounding and privacy-preserving machine learning. Additionally, our Customer Copyright Commitment means education customers can be confident using our services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims. We look forward to exploring the potential for these offers in education, iterating and improving, and supporting all education organizations in the era of AI.
5. Reflect updates
Integrate Reflect with your LMS
We are happy to share that you can now seamlessly integrate Reflect with your Learning Management System (LMS) to create impactful check-ins, gain wellbeing insights, and build a happier, healthier learning community. Reflect LMS integrations are free and designed in compliance with the latest Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards, ensuring robust security and simple installation within your district or institutional environment of Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and Blackboard Learn.
Learn more and get step-by-step instructions for setting up this integration with your LMS.
When: available now.
Unlock powerful wellbeing insights
We are thrilled to introduce a new dashboard for tracking Reflect data over time. This capability allows you to monitor when learners feel pleasant and motivated, as well as identify times and areas where attention may be needed. The check-in creator can follow trends over time, filter for specific dates and questions, and explore data at both the class and course levels, as well as the individual student level. This enables targeted personal support based on their wellbeing needs.
When: available now.
6. OneNote
Built-in Class Notebook Toolbar for OneNote Desktop 365
To support educators in their transition from the OneNote Windows 10 app to the M365 Desktop version of OneNote, starting in February, the Class Notebook toolbar can be enabled through the in-app settings experience so educators will no longer need to go through the process of downloading and installing the Class Notebook add-in.
This improvement will bring all of the features that educators have come to love in the Class Notebook toolbar experience in the Windows 10 app over to the M365 Desktop version.
When: These changes will reach the monthly update channel during the month of March 2024 and will reach the semi annual update channel in July.
We are thrilled to announce that OneNote will join the M365 ecosystem of apps to host Loop components! Just as you’ve seen with Teams, Outlook, and Word, we will be bringing the ability to add Loop components into your OneNote notebook.
In addition, you’ll be able to create and insert Loop components directly from the Insert menu in OneNote!
When: Rolling out to Microsoft 365 Insiders in the coming weeks
And finally, just to recap all the news we have for you this month, here’s a quick review of all the features that are generally available or are rolling out now:
- Reading Coach stand-alone app
- Teams for Education updates
• Rubric generation AI – private preview
• Assignment Instructions generation AI – private preview
• Classwork module generation AI – private preview
• Teams Admin controls for generative AI features
• Classwork Reuse globally available
• Reflect in Assignments globally available - Loop app availability announcement for EDU (March)
- Microsoft Copilot
• Copilot with Data Protection available for faculty and students 18+
• Copilot for iOS and Android availability
• Copilot for Windows 11 availability
• Copilot for Microsoft 365 availability for Faculty - Reflect updates
• LMS updates
• Well-being Insights - OneNote updates
• Class Notebook toolbar built-in to OneNote Desktop 365
• Loop component creation and embed
Have any feedback to share with us? As always, we’d love to hear it!
Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education