Microsoft has been busy at work adding a host of new capabilities as well as features in Teams for Education this past month. The company has now published a new blog post highlighting these enhancements. Here’s everything you need to know:
Viva Connections for Education
First up, towards the end of last month, Microsoft launched Viva Connections for Education, a tool designed to provide students with a unified experience directly within Microsoft Teams to mitigate these issues.
It’s in place to help students stay on track with everything going on at school both academic and extracurricular. Viva Connections is expected to hit general availability in July 2023.
Assignments Updates
Microsoft has made a couple of key improvements in regard to how both course facilitators and students handle assignments. First up, Teams for Education makes it easier for tutors to remove assignments from the students’ view once they have completed the tasks.
This goes a long way in reducing clutter, thus making it easier for them to keep track of active assignments and also ensuring that students don’t miss deadlines.
The feature allows teachers to mark assignments that are no longer important as inactive and remove them from the students’ view. Students can still refer back to these assignments in their completed assignment list and gradebook. The feature is expected to ship to broad availability in April.
Next up, the Create Experience for Assignments in Teams for Education has also been revamped across Mobile, Web, and Desktop. It now features plenty of space for instructions, a well-defined selection of new Assignments options, and a new and quick way that facilitates the scheduling of assignments without necessarily navigating between separate dialogs.
The feature is expected to roll out to broad availability in April.
New Teams app experience
Microsoft recently launched the new Teams app for Windows that’s faster, smarter, and more intelligent. The same capabilities have been replicated in the Teams for Education experience.
It should be noted that this experience is exclusive to the Windows client. The company has indicated that the new experience is expected to hit general availability “tentatively by H2CY2023.”
And finally, Microsoft has enhanced app support in Channel Meetings, including polls. We invite you to check out our separate post highlighting everything new in Microsoft Teams (free) for the month of March. Share your thoughts with us in the comments.