What’s new in Microsoft 365 - Spring 2023

Source: Salamander

Spring 2023

Inactive Assignments in Teams.

Teachers can now mark assignments as “inactive”, which has been a popular request among educators who wanted a way to hide specific assignments from the main assignments list. For example, optional assignments and ones not completed by all students.

Simply find and open the Assignment you want to hide, tap the three dots (…) and select Mark as inactive.

The task will be hidden from the assignment list, but you can still access its content in the completed assignment list and your grade book.

Weighted grading in Assignments.

Teachers now have the option to set up weighted grading for assignments in Teams. For example, homework assignments could make up 30% of a student’s final grade, while work in the classroom makes up 50% and weekly quizzes 20%.

Coming Soon - The new Classwork App.

Microsoft is launching one solution to create and organise all class content in Teams.

Classwork allows teachers to organise their resources, assignments, files, links, channels and Class Notebooks into modules that are aligned with their curriculum structure.

Search Coach in Teams.

Identifying reliable resources can be tricky for students, but Microsoft has created a new tab app that helps them develop key literacy skills.

The app – dubbed a “search engine with training wheels” – provides real-time coaching to support students in searching the right questions and using advanced search techniques.

Search Coach in Teams.

Identifying reliable resources can be tricky for students, but Microsoft has created a new tab app that helps them develop key literacy skills.

The app – dubbed a “search engine with training wheels” – provides real-time coaching to support students in searching the right questions and using advanced search techniques.

Comprehension questions in Reading Progress.

Reading Progress is already a popular tool in Microsoft Teams, supporting educators to monitor and improve their students’ reading fluency.

A long-awaited feature that many teachers have requested is the ability to add reading comprehension questions to Reading Progress assignments… and now Microsoft has announced it’ll be launching this year!

Teachers can add Microsoft Form-style questions to the assignments and monitor both the classes’ reading fluency and comprehension.

January 2023

More options for Microsoft Forms.  

Microsoft Forms is an excellent tool for creating quizzes for your lessons or for assigning as homework.   

Some new features have been added to enhance the student experience in forms  

Teachers can now add images for multiple choice questions and create an engaging and eye-catching cover page for their surveys and quizzes.

Updates to Microsoft Teams Polls.  

Polls in Microsoft Teams meetings are handy for engaging a virtual class and getting a quick show of hands in meetings with colleagues and other staff members.   

Microsoft has added a few new features to polls, including the ability to ask multiple questions in a poll and include images in their polls.    

Insights for Rubrics.   

Rubrics information is now available on the Assignments Insights tab in Class Teams. Teachers can track the rubric results for an entire class or look at a student’s results across multiple assignments.  

The visualisations help educators quickly identify pain points and adjust teaching and future assignments to meet those specific needs.  
 

There have been several updates to Microsoft Teams, making chatting and collaborating with colleagues and students even more effortless.   

You can now:  

• Schedule chat messages to be sent at a later time/date.   
• Add a person to the chat by typing @ followed by the person’s name.   
• Delete chat conversations you no longer need without impacting others in the same chat.   
• Access a full library of emojis for messages and reacting to messages.