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Achieve more in the classroom with new Teams features

March 23, 2023.

By Microsoft Education Team

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Microsoft Teams for Education has been a game-changer for educators who want to create a more collaborative and organized learning environment. With its ability to bring meetings, content, and apps together in one place, Teams has become a go-to digital hub for educators. Now with even more dynamic updates, Teams is offering new and exciting features that can help students and educators achieve even more in the classroom.

Explore the latest updates to Teams and how they can help educators create a more supportive, dynamic, and interactive learning experience for students.

Use the Classwork app to create and organize content

Teams for Education is about to get even easier to use with the upcoming release of the new Classwork app! Classwork is specifically designed for educators to simplify the task of managing their curriculum. This app offers educators a one-stop shop to access all their teaching materials, and in the future, effortlessly reuse class content. With Classwork, educators can create and organize various class resources, such as assignments, files, links, channels, Class Notebook pages, and more.

Organization has never been so simple! Educators can create modules with descriptions to organize courses into distinct units by topic, lesson, or week. Modules are saved in a draft state and are not visible to students by default, allowing educators to build their content in the app at their own pace. Once they’re ready, they can easily publish the content for students, dragging and dropping modules into a desired order. Additionally, educators can "pin" important modules to the top of the list, making it even easier for their students to find the most relevant content without having to scroll through past modules.

Learn more about the Classwork app.

Develop information literacy skills with Search Coach

“Students don’t often know how to use search effectively. That’s what Search Coach does—it turns students into critical thinkers and researchers.” –John Stapley, Head of Digital Technology at Napier Boys’ High School

With a commitment to help prepare students for their futures, we’re excited to introduce Search Coach , a simple and powerful new app that helps educators and students develop information literacy skills by forming effective queries and finding reliable resources.

Introducing Search Coach in Microsoft Teams

This Microsoft Learning Accelerator offers real-time coaching and feedback, easy access to advanced search techniques, and details about each website to help students learn to ask the right questions and search with confidence. It is crucial to introduce students to these skills with authentic practice early on to cultivate their ability to become well-informed and critical consumers of information.

To help educators get started, we’ve also created an ever-growing page of resources for teaching information literacy skills with Search Coach.

Improve grading with weights and averages

We’ve revamped our grading experience, to make grading in Teams more streamlined and accurate for educators and students. Two new options are available for educators to turn on: weighted categories and average grade.

With weighted grading categories, educators can assign different percentages to different assignments in Grades. To assess a student's performance more accurately, educators can assign percentage weights to different types of assignments like class assignments, homework, projects, essays, and exams. This helps in effectively evaluating assignments as some may be more demanding in terms of demonstrating knowledge than others. Weighted categories can be enabled in Grade settings.

Breathing exercises led by Feelings Monster in Reflect

Educators can also enable the average grades option for students in the new Grade settings. Students can view their most up to date grades, allowing them to easily track their progress and empowering them to take control of their learning. By having access to their grades, students can quickly assess their strengths and weaknesses, find areas that need improvement, and take corrective action.

If a class is using grading categories, average grades will be calculated by multiplying the average score in each category by that category’s weight. This provides students with a more accurate picture of their overall progress.

Educator view of Grades dashboard with average grade toggled to Yes

Educator view of student grades with average grade highlighted

Learn more about Grades.

Distribute, code and grade Python and Jupyter Notebooks 

Python is a highly popular programming language that is increasingly used in education for fields such as data science, mathematics, physics, and statistics. We are thrilled to announce the native integration of Python Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb) and Python Script files (.py) directly into Teams Assignments.

With this integration, educators and their students can distribute and work on Python code within Teams Assignments without having to set up a separate coding environment. They can also add comments to the notebooks, just like when reviewing Microsoft Word documents. Once the assignment is completed, the notebooks and scripts can be turned in to the educator in Teams for grading.

View of Python files in Jupyter notebook in Teams

Learn more about Jupyter Notebooks in Assignments.

Create inclusive meetings with Sign Language View

To ensure that all students can fully participate and engage with the content being presented, inclusive and accessible meeting environments are crucial. When a meeting is not accessible, students with disabilities may feel excluded or discouraged from participating, which can negatively impact their learning experience.

We’re excited to introduce Sign Language View, a new feature designed to make meetings more accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and their interpreters. Sign Language View keeps up to two signers in a consistent location on center stage throughout the meeting, making it easier to follow the conversation. This feature can be enabled during a meeting or set as a persistent setting for all Teams calls. The prioritized video streams appear at the right aspect ratio and highest quality for clear communication. Like pinning and captioning, this view is personal to the user and doesn't affect others in the meeting.

Teams meeting with sign language interpreter pinned on screen

Learn more about Sign Language View for Teams Meetings.

Support students’ well-being with Reflect

The Reflect app supports student well-being by providing a private space for reflection and response to prompts from educators. It's a valuable tool for promoting mindfulness and reflection in classrooms. With four recent updates, the Reflect app has been enhanced with new features that improve inclusivity and ease of use for educators to incorporate into their routine.

Breathing exercises

When we intentionally focus on our breath and engage in slow, deep breathing, it can help to calm the body and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. This can lead to feelings of relaxation and an improved mood. The Feelings Monster is excited to help educators incorporate breathing exercises into their class routine. After students check in, the Feelings Monster will guide them to focus on their breath and get their body and mind ready to learn.

GIF of breathing exercises led by Feelings Monster in Reflect

Promoting inclusivity in Reflect 

We've added new features to Reflect to promote inclusivity. When creating a check-in, educators can now choose simplified emotional vocabulary, reducing cognitive load for students and making it easier for learners who are new to emotion words.[

Additionally, students can hear the definition of each word read aloud as if the speaker were experiencing that emotion, supporting their emotional awareness in a multi-sensory way. This feature is available in English, Spanish, and Japanese, and will soon be available in more languages.

Customized and routine check-ins

Check-ins can help create a positive and inclusive classroom environment where students feel safe and supported. Regular check-ins also help educators monitor their students' emotions over time and identify any changes, patterns, or potential problems early on.

Reflect has two new features, check-in ideas gallery and Ask it again , to make check-ins even faster and more consistent. With the new check-in ideas gallery , educators can easily customize Reflect questions. Simply choose from a variety of suggested questions or jumpstart an idea using the provided stems. Using a variety of check-in questions enables educators to get to know their students better while also challenging them to build self-awareness.

Educator view for options to choose for Reflect check-ins

To make check-ins a simple routine we added the new Ask it again button, which lets educators quickly repeat a past check-in question with just one click. Collecting data for the same check-in question overtime will highlight any changes for the educator

Educator view for using Ask it again feature on past Reflect check-in question

Learn more about supporting student well-being using Reflect.

These are just a few of this month's fresh new and updated Teams features that help educators enhance their teaching and promote meaningful and engaging learning experiences for students.

Don’t miss out on all the latest and greatest Teams updates, visit our Education Blog post about all the newest Teams updates and sign up for the Microsoft Education Newsletter to get tips, creative ideas, and all the latest information! 

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Inclusive, student-centered learning environments increase success by empowering every learner to achieve more, regardless of their ability. This year, many students are missing the in-person support they would typically receive with the shift to remote and hybrid learning. For one school, this was an opportunity to prove how innovation, dedicated educators, and the right tools can help all students find success.

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More than ever, educators are relying on technology to create inclusive learning environments that support all learners. As we recognize Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we’re pleased to mark the occasion with a spotlight on an innovative school that is committed to digital access and success for all.

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Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, meetings, files, and apps together in one place. Because Teams is built on Office 365, schools benefit from integration with their familiar Office apps and services. It delivers enterprise-grade security and compliance that is extensible and customizable to fit the needs of every school.

With Microsoft Teams, your school or institution can create collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, communicate with school staff, coordinate research across institutions or more easily facilitate student life efforts like clubs or extracurricular activities – all from a single experience in Office 365 for Education.

Microsoft Teams for Education comes with all the powerful communication and collaboration tools that are available to other Teams users. Select here to configure Teams for your school .

Unique Teams capabilities for education users

A simplified Teams view that provides a simpler way to navigate and reduces visual distractions.

OneNote Class Notebooks are built into every class team, allowing educators to organize interactive lessons and deliver personalized learning right from Teams.

End-to-end assignment management in Teams enables educators to move quickly and effortlessly from creation and distribution to grading and feedback.

Class home pages for your class teams allows educators to post announcements, pin class resources, show upcoming assignments and recently edited files, and more from a class's home page in Teams.

• Currently, Home page is automatically placed in the Teams left rail menu, but IT admins can choose to block or allow Home page in the Teams Admin Center .

Assignments and weekly guardian e-mail digest

One of the new features related to Assignments is the weekly guardian e-mail digest which are weekly emails sent to students' parents or guardians. The emails will contain information about assignments from the previous week and for the upcoming week, and will be sent over the weekend. The emails need to be set up and updated by the admins using the School Data Sync feature . SDS automatically populates classes for Teams with student rosters from the school’s student information system (SIS). The steps to enable this feature are:

Import parent contact information via Parent and Guardian Sync in SDS. Select here for instructions on how to enable Parent and Guardian Sync .

Turn on the Guardian Setting in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, as the setting is turned off by default. This will enable educators to send out a weekly digest. For more information, see Expand Teams across your organization . Educators can opt-out of the digest by deselecting the setting inside their own personal class team (Settings > Parent/Guardian Emails).

Select here to find more information on Assignments and related features you can turn on in the Admin center.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Alexa, can you help me with my child’s homework?

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What did you do when you couldn’t solve a tricky maths equation?

Did you search for the answer on Google, skip doing the homework altogether and tell your teacher dog ate it, or watch as your parents asked Alexa for the answer?

As bizarre as it may sound, the latter scenario is happening at an alarming rate, as parents and grandparents struggle to help kids complete their homework – particularly mathematics. 

There comes a time when homework becomes a little too advanced for parents to help with, especially as many forget how to do tricky long divisions, algebra or the names of all the triangles once they finish school . With over 500 million Alexa-enabled devices sold worldwide, people are using technology to their advantage when it comes to maths.

New data commissioned by the Department for Education ’s Skills for Life campaign and Kindred found that 54% of parents would say they ‘would struggle to know where to start’ if left to their own decisions when helping children with their maths homework.

The Skills for Life campaign is encouraging adults of all ages to up their skills and learn something new, and to boost their confidence when helping their children at home and potentially improve their own career prospects. 

Of the 2,250 adults surveyed, 69% said they use the internet to help solve schoolwork problems and 20% reported using virtual assistants, like Alexa and Google Assistant, to help tutor their kids at home. Maths was revealed to cause the most angst and was voted the least favourite homework subject among parents and grandparents.

The data comes as education groups raise concerns about the growing use of AI in students’ work. Asking a virtual assistant for help on a task you plan to finish yourself is quite different to asking ChatGPT to come up with the answers for you, it raises questions about how much we rely on technology. 

A 16-year-old student identified only as Fiore previously told Metro.co.uk that he turned to ChatGPT when he realised an English essay was due the next day. It’s 2024 after all, and his story serves as a stark reminder that the days of cramming the assignment into an all-nighter or turning to SparkNotes for help are long gone.

Although many people would fear plagiarism detectors or eagle-eyed lecturers spotting AI-generated essays , the student wasn’t afraid about being caught. 

However, not all students are using AI to cheat and not all are using ChatGPT, with some turning to Gemini, which was developed by Google. Chatbots have also been found to be helpful for students with dyslexia when it comes to comprehending in-depth academic texts. 

Jane Basnett, director of digital learning at Downe House School in Berkshire admits that homework can be tricky for parents. ‘In the old days, parents turned to the Encyclopaedia Britannica to find responses, visited the library with their child or they asked a more informed friend,’ she told Metro.co.uk. ‘They had conversations and made discoveries about different topics that perhaps they had not known about before.’ 

This practice, however, has changed drastically now that technology is just one tap, swipe or voice command away. ‘Finding the knowledge is one thing, understanding it and engaging with it properly is another.

‘Parents need to encourage their child to understand the GenAI output and to put their own responses together.

‘These are just the sort of conversations that teachers are having with their students in classrooms across the country. Gen AI (generative artificial intelligence) is a tool that can very quickly do your homework for you but in doing so, it takes away the key important elements of education: learning, discovering and critical thinking.’

One dad, Paul Duggan, 68, from London made a huge life change after realising he couldn’t help his daughter with her homework. He completed a Skills for Life Numeracy course in 2020, when his daughter Rebecca was 10, after she inspired him to sign up.

He has since gone on to achieve a Functional Skills qualification in maths, which is equivalent to a Maths GCSE. 

‘I always had a difficult relationship with maths,’ he said. ‘I think a lot of people do. When my daughter, Rebecca, started needing more help with her homework I realised that if I didn’t tackle my fear of numbers now, not only would I be unable to help, but I’d also risk passing on my negative relationship with maths, which I certainly didn’t want to do.’

Not all parents will be able to find the time to brush up on their maths skills, as they often have to balance full-time jobs, the needs of other children, the cost of living and general life stuff. But for those like Paul who could, it has proven to be invaluable.

‘Signing up to the Skills for Life course was honestly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It’s helped boost my confidence with everyday sums, and I’ve also grown a lot closer to my daughter, Rebecca, in the process, helping her solve equations and more complex problems as she studies for her maths GSCE.’

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Can we get a homework extension asterisk talley, 15, has a uswo to try and win.

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There may come a day when Asterisk Talley looks back and laughs.

The braces and bands, pony-tail braid and bracelet – and the bravado – it might all elicit a head shake and a flushed face, like most of us when looking back on ourselves as teens.

For now, though, it’s just a sense of awe – at least on our end.

For her, it’s more like, “just stay in the zone.”

Talley shot 1-over 71 Friday at the U.S. Women’s Open. Even more impressive, it came on the heels of an opening 70, on a day in which only four players shot in the 60s, a day in which one-name wonders Nelly, Rose and Lydia all shot 80.

Here’s Asterisk, 1 over par for the championship and, at the time, just two off the lead, sitting on the set of “Live From” Friday afternoon and reviewing her round while the hosts plead with her high school teachers to give her a little leeway with her homework.

“I have a bunch,” Talley, a freshman at Chowchilla High in central California, said, “and it’s all due today. That’s probably not going to get done today.”

If you weren’t looking at the braces and etc., but watching her play; if you weren’t listening to her interviews, but hearing what she said; you would believe her veteran, and you’d do well to believe her a serious contender at Lancaster Country Club.

Talley, in what feels like a U.S. Open from days long before she was born, had two bogeys and a birdie on Friday. “If you make a bogey here and there, that’s OK,” she said. “Nothing more than a bogey is good.”

She’s only made one score worse than bogey thus far, a triple at the par-5 seventh in Round 1. Aside from that, she’s 2 under for 35 holes.

Friday, with a driver she switched to before the start of the championship, she led the field in strokes gained: off the tee, averaged nearly 269 yards per drive, found 11 of 14 fairways and hit 13 of 18 greens in regulation.

Impressive numbers, but none more so than: 15.

Earlier during “Live From,” when Talley was still on the course, Mel Reid, a seven-time USWO participant who is working as an analyst this week, noted 15-year-olds don’t have much scar tissue. What many do possess, however, is a reservoir of possibility.

Talley’s bracelet reads, “FEARLESS.” That’s her on-course attitude, not Taylor Swift-inspired.

“My dad always taught me to not be nervous,” said Talley, who recently teamed with fellow teen Sarah Lim to win the USGA’s Four-Ball championship. “If I’m nervous, I’m just going to mess up anyways.”

Her emotions have yet to betray her.

Goal 1 was to make the cut. Check. Goal 2 was to be low amateur. Got some competition there. But if she can achieve that, she figures, she’s playing well enough to achieve Goal 3: win.

“Setting the bar high for myself really helps me play better golf. If I expect the best out of myself and I don’t meet that, then I’m still doing OK,” said Talley, who ended the day tied for fifth and five back.

One of the benefits to playing well over the first two days, is a late tee time on Saturday. That’s much appreciated after a 4 a.m. wakeup ahead of Round 2. Talley said she would spend the time in between, resting, practicing and eating.

And for her teachers who were watching Friday, “maybe do some homework,” as well.

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If you plan to use Teams for work or school in Windows 11, you can connect and collaborate by downloading and installing  Microsoft Teams (work or school) . This applies if you use either of the following accounts:

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What should I do if I used Teams free or as a Guest in an org and no longer have access?

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