Enhancements to boost student engagement

The use of digital tools for remote and hybrid learning looks set to continue, according to the nearly 500 Microsoft Education community members surveyed recently. Educators, parents and institutional leaders were asked about what they’ve learned from the transition to remote learning and how they are preparing for the future. 

Over half of the surveyed educators from the MS community said “keeping students engaged digitally” and “student participation” are the top challenges they faced during remote learning. Traditional lesson plans do not always translate digitally — and in many cases teachers are finding they can’t recreate the school day with just live sessions.

New remote learning formats require new thinking to create compelling, engaging and inclusive content. To ensure strong student engagement across different activities and maintain secure digital classrooms, educators are turning to a central hub of digital tools for remote learning. This includes Microsoft Education products, with Teams for Education as the central hub.

Microsoft has announced improvements to the Teams experience that it claim will help with engagement challenges:

1. Seeing all students’ faces at the same time makes a big difference in student engagement, as well as social and emotional connection. To facilitate, Microsoft will expand the Teams grid view to accommodate up to 49 participants on a single screen and will follow up with virtual Breakout Room functionality, allowing students to meet and collaborate in small groups.
2. Additional options to ensure every student can participate, including attendance reports, class insights and intelligent data analytics that highlight individual student engagement including assignment submission, activity metrics and grades.

Microsoft says sharing best practices and continued conversation is how the overall educational experience will be improved for all and encourages educators, administrators and institutional leaders to share stories and tips or ask questions on the Remote Learning Community platform. 

For further information, or to read the entire blog post from Barbara Holzapfel, GM Education at Microsoft, click here. 

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/myboys.me