Microsoft Education in Blackboard

The Meetings app incorporates Teams meetings into LMS courses. Educators and students can view upcoming and past meetings, find and play meeting recordings, schedule individual or recurring meetings, and easily join meetings related to the course, all from within their LMS.

Learn More about how to use Teams Meetings in your LMS course

Integrating Microsoft Teams with your Blackboard Ultra course creates a dedicated team instance that syncs with your course roster, providing a comprehensive collaborative workspace for your students. This integration establishes a complete Teams environment outside of Blackboard while maintaining connection to your course enrollment.

Users can access the course team right through the Microsoft Education dashboard for the course there is no doubt which team is the collaboration

Learn More about using Microsoft Teams in your LMS course.

The Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft 365 files integration brings Word, PowerPoint, Excel viewers and editors along with PDF, Stream video player, and images and directly into your most important LMS workflows that include:

• Link and embed documents and video as resources and course content

• Use Microsoft 365 Copilot to edit and transform content right inside of your LMS

• Assigning documents as LMS assignments

• Students editing and submitting documents as part of LMS assignments

• Collaborative documents for courses members and groups

The Microsoft 365 LTI delivers a modern user experience, complete with an expanded Microsoft OneDrive file picker and rich embedded editing experiences for Office files.

Microsoft Education Collaboration tools enable real-time, simultaneous editing and sharing of documents between faculty and students. The full capabilities of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, are now available within the LMS experience for collaborative documents. Students and faculty can work together on the same document in real-time, whether creating new content or editing existing OneDrive documents. These tools serve as versatile replacements for traditional collaborative platforms, supporting use cases such as collaborative wikis for course knowledge bases, shared sign-up sheets for presentations or office hours, group project development, peer review workflows, real-time brainstorming sessions, collaborative note-taking during lectures, shared research data collection and analysis, co-authored lab reports, joint presentation creation, meeting minutes for student organizations, collaborative study guide development, and portfolio building with instructor feedback and guidance.

1. In your course go into the Content location within which you want students to collaborate on a document, then click + > Content Market from the Tools menu.

2. Click on Microsoft Education Collaboration

3. Choose to either create blank Word, Excel or PowerPoint document or click Select Existing Document to Browse and find the file you wish to share with your class, then select it.

4. If you are creating a new document, give it a Document Name.

5. Inputting a Description is optional.

6. When done, click Create.

Use OneNote Class Notebook to create a shared notebook and link it to your course for easy discovery and access. OneNote Class Notebooks create a private space for each student's content that is only visible to course instructors, and instructors can distribute OneNote Pages with course content to their class easily.

OneNote Pages can be used for note taking, journaling, inking for writing, drawing and are great for math, music, and art, or anytime there is a need to organize and collaborate on content with your students. OneNote Pages can also be assigned and turned in using Microsoft Education Assignments.

Existing and new students enrolled in your LMS course can access the notebook automatically without and instructor having to add them.

Learn More about how to create and use a OneNote Class Notebook in your LMS course.

The Assignments and Grades features in the Microsoft Education tool in Blackboard allow educators to assign tasks, work, or quizzes to their students. Educators can manage assignment timelines, instructions, add resources to turn in, grade with rubrics, and more.  Faculty can also select Learning Accelerators to add Reading Progress, Search Progress and other Learning Accelerators to the Assignment or integrate OneDrive files (see OneDrive Assignment Tool).

Key Integration Benefits:

Multi-Class Publishing: With Duplicate, you can copy the assignment to another class. With Copy Link, you can get a direct link to the assignment and share it over chat, email, or any other platform you use to communicate with your students. Attachments for an assignment in Microsoft Teams for Education - Microsoft Support

AI-Enhanced Features: AI instructions for educators are designed to streamline assignment creation and editing to offer options to add more details, increase inclusivity, and engage young readers.

Time-Saving Tools: With new multi-class assignment options, you can quickly make one or more changes and publish to all your classes in one action, saving you time and streamlining the management of your assignment timelines.

Adding a Microsoft Assignment to your course

1. Go into the content area where you wish to place your assignment.

2. Click the + > Content Market > Microsoft Education Assignment

3. Click on Assignment (if you choose to use any of the accelerators, you can alternatively click on them there instead, or add them after clicking on Assignment).

4. Set up your assignment details as you wish.

   1. Add the Title

   2. Add a Description – you can use the AI tools to enhance your directions once you begin typing into the Instructions box.

   3. You can attach files.

   4. Clicking the New button allows you to add a blank Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Class Notebook page and a Flip Video Recording.

   5. Add your assignment settings such as due date/time, rubric and points possible.

   6. You can also add Learning Accelerators to your assignment (see the Learning Accelerators section for details).

5. When done, click Save.

6. Your assignment will now appear in your content area and a gradebook item will be created. You can edit the assignment by clicking the … to the right of it > Edit.  Here in the right pane, you can change the visibility, due date/time, points, and category, plus a short description.

7. To edit in more detail the assignment, click on the assignment itself and then click the … in the upper-right corner and click Edit assignment.

Microsoft Learning Accelerators are tools that streamline the creation, review, and analysis of practice assignments, offering students real-time coaching to help them progress. These tools support Introduction to foundational and future-ready skills acquisition, enabling educators to provide differentiated learning activities and instant feedback, while also fostering improvement in an inclusive environment.

Learning Accelerators cover two core areas, foundational and future-ready skills. Foundational skills include reading, numeracy, and emotional well-being. Future-ready skills include digital literacy (search) and presentation (speaking). Introduction to Learning Accelerators - Training | Microsoft Learn

Each tool type includes both Coach and Progress components:

• Coach tools: Provide students real-time mentoring and opportunities for self-directed learning Upskill Your Workforce with Microsoft Training | Microsoft Learn

• Progress tools: Designed to help teachers personalize assignments, feedback and instruction, assisted by actionable insights Upskill Your Workforce with Microsoft Training | Microsoft Learn

Reading Tools (Reading Coach & Reading Progress)

Reading Coach and Immersive Reader help students take responsibility for their own learning with gentle guidance through pronunciation, syllabification, reading speed, and vocabulary recall. Introduction to Learning Accelerators - Training | Microsoft Learn Reading Progress is a free tool built into Microsoft Teams designed to support and track reading fluency in your class. Students record their reading on camera and submit it to you. Learning Accelerators for Microsoft Teams Education - Microsoft Support

Key Features

• Reading Coach: Real-time pronunciation guidance, syllable support, and vocabulary assistance

• Reading Progress: Students record their reading on camera and submit it to you. As you mark and return their work, data is automatically collected and organized in Insights, helping you spend more time with students and less time analyzing data. Learning Accelerators for Microsoft Teams Education - Microsoft Support

Faculty Benefits

• Automatic analysis of reading errors, accuracy rates, and words per minute

• Personalized feedback for individual students

• Time-saving assignment creation and review process

• Data-driven insights to inform reading instruction

Math Tools (Math Progress)

Math Progress assists in streamlining assignment creation, simplifying lesson planning, and gathering student performance insights, helping educators save time and accelerate learning outcomes. Introduction to Learning Accelerators - Training | Microsoft Learn Math Progress is a feature that enables the speedy creation of both multiple choice and short answer quiz questions appropriate for K - 12 students. Learning Accelerators for Microsoft Teams Education - Microsoft Support

Key Features

• Quick creation of math assignments and homework

• Multiple choice and short answer question formats

• Automated grading and feedback

• Performance analytics to identify challenging concepts

Faculty Benefits

• Streamlined assignment creation process

• Instant insights into which math concepts challenge students most

• Personalized support recommendations based on student performance

• Time saved on grading and analysis

Search Tools (Search Coach & Search Progress)

Search Coach helps students learn how to form effective search queries, find trusted sites and think critically about their results in an ad-free environment. Introduction to Learning Accelerators - Training | Microsoft Learn Search Coach is designed to teach students how to compose efficient search queries and evaluate their results. Learning Accelerators for Microsoft Teams Education - Microsoft Support

Key Features

• Search Coach: Real-time guidance on effective search strategies

• Search Progress: Teacher insights into student search behaviors and information literacy development

• Filters for the category, type, and posting date of the information, which means that work is always up-to-date, secure, and reliable The Beacon: How to boost learning with Learning Accelerators | Microsoft Education Blog

• Integration with NewsGuard for source credibility verification

Faculty Benefits

• Track the development of information literacy skills and create a window into students' search activity and behaviors What Are Microsoft's New Learning Accelerators? – TCEA TechNotes Blog

• Help students distinguish fact from opinion

• Monitor how students evaluate digital sources

• Support critical thinking about online information

Speaking Tools (Speaker Coach & Speaker Progress)

Speaker Coach evaluates students' public speaking performances and gives personalized feedback on details like pitch, use of filler words, and pacing without the stress of an audience using the real-time tool. Learning Accelerators | Microsoft Education Speaker Progress can help students overcome their fear of public speaking and become more confident, captivating, and competent speakers. Learning Accelerators for Microsoft Teams Education - Microsoft Support

Key Features

• Speaker Coach: Real-time feedback on pitch, pacing, filler words, and presentation skills

• Speaker Progress: Monitor data on student public speaking skills with analytics from Speaker Coach. Track how presentation skills are improving at the individual, class, grade, and school levels Learning Accelerators | Microsoft Education

• Practice opportunities without audience pressure

• Integration with Teams meetings and PowerPoint presentations

Faculty Benefits

• Objective assessment of presentation skills

• Detailed analytics on student progress over time

• Reduced time spent on manual presentation evaluation

• Support for building students' confidence in public speaking

Microsoft Reflect helps you create impactful check-ins to gain insights into your learners' well-being and build a happier and healthier learning community, all through one easy-to-use app.

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