Introducing Education Resources, a source of Open Educational Resources within Office 365
Published Oct 05 2017 09:02 AM 47.7K Views
Microsoft

Today's post comes from Principal Product Manager, Jim Federico

 

In the Education Product Team, we spend a lot of time in classrooms. We talk to teachers, students, parents, education leaders, curricula specialists, IT professionals, policy writers – pretty much everyone who has anything to do with teaching and learning. In these conversations, we've become aware of challenges teachers face in differentiating student instruction.  Finding quality, standards-aligned teaching materials drains teachers time.  

 

And so, a team of us at Microsoft created a new Office 365 feature that we call Education Resources. We believe it will be a game-changer for how teachers search for and access classroom content that meets the varying academic interests and needs of their students. 

 

Standards-Aligned Curriculum Solution 

From within OneNote Class Notebooks, Education Resources gives teachers access to approximately 300,000 standards-aligned open educational resources (OER). All resources are aligned to US National and State standards, including the District of Columbia.  Soif you are a teacher in Tennessee, we have you covered with the recently released Tennessee Academic Standards. If you are a teacher in Washington, you will find resources aligned to all the standards relevant in Washington. We have also incorporated standards for many countries including Australia, Canada, India, England and others. Because education standards change frequently, we update our standards and alignments to resources several times a month. 

 

To try this out, get latest version (1.8.4) of the Class Notebook addin and go to the Insert menu and choose Education Resources.

OneNote2300speed.gif

Education Resources integrated in the Class Notebook Addin 

 

 

Standards-Aligned Assessment Solution 

In addition to the curricular solutions, Education Resources also presents integrated assessments via Microsoft Forms. From Forms, teachers can access approximately 1,000 free formative assessments written by professional item writers. These assessments are aligned to the same set of standards listed above. Forms 2300 speed.gif

Education Resources integrated Microsoft Forms

 

Teacher Feedback 

In the past months, 12 school districts have been piloting the tool while we welcomed their candid feedback. For example, when we showed our Western Australia users all 109 sets of education standards, they recommended we show only the standards relevant to their region. We delivered on this request and the experience is now much more streamlined. 

 

“Great teachers spend significant time searching, identifying and aligning learning resources to curriculum standards, with a goal of providing the very best personalized experiences for their students,” said Aidan McCarthy, Head of Digital Transformation at Catholic Education Western Australia. “Microsoft in partnership with open content resource providers allows teachers to save time by integrating Education Resources into familiar O365 tools like OneNote and Forms, saving valuable teaching time and costs for teachers, students, and schools.” 

 

Teacher feedback convinced us to build this feature and teacher feedback directly shaped what we’re releasing today. While we’re excited to preview Education Resources, we’re even more excited to connect teachers to high-quality resources, saving them time to connect with students and enhance learning.  

 

Get Started 

Education Resources will be rolling out to Office 365 for Education tenants in preview in October. To get started, ask your O365 administrator to enable access within the Office 365 Admin Center. Once enabled, teachers can access the curriculum and assessments that integrate with OneNote Class Notebooks and Microsoft Forms respectively. 

 

To share your feedback and feature requests, visit  https://aka.ms/erfeedback 

 

24 Comments
Copper Contributor
Hi Mike! Great feature! I can't find the download to Version 1.8.4. The "official" Donwload links to 1.8.3...
Microsoft
Hey Kurt - should show up in an hour or so. Takes a little bit to propagate across data centers
Iron Contributor

And we can't find the ENABLE switch in the Office365 Admin Centre :)

Microsoft

Send me a mail and Jim Federico and I will figure this out

Copper Contributor

@Calvin Armstrong 

 

the url is https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/Settings/ServicesAndAddIns

 

or in slow steps:

 

settings

services and addins

 

Copper Contributor

@Merlijn Donk
Thank you for the above  I spent an hour trying to figure this out.

Microsoft

Do you have things working now?  Send a mail to edusup@microsoft.com if you have problems

Brass Contributor

I LOVE this! My teachers will so love being able to use the pre-built content so they're not re-creating the wheel all the time. It works right away in Forms, but we're using Class Notebooks Online (within Teams/SDS), not the desktop app/program so much - will the Educational Resources be available soon in Class Notebook Online soon too?

Microsoft

We hope to bring it to OneNote Online in the near future.  

Copper Contributor

Working great in OneNote but doesn't appear in Forms yet. 

Copper Contributor

Hello Mike!

Capture15.JPGCapture16.JPGWe haven't got this feature

Brass Contributor

Same here, is it because we're in France, or must we wait for some more time?

Microsoft

Hi folks - can all of you send a mail to edusup@microsoft.com? They should be able to help troubleshoot 

Brass Contributor

Thanks @Mike Tholfsen, mail sent.

included @Eric DRONNEAU in the mail.

Copper Contributor

Thanks  @Mike Tholfsen and for your answers...

Brass Contributor

 I am waiting eagerly to run the upgrade Mike. But so far couldnt get any links for Plugin Class Notebook 1.8.4

Microsoft

Kalpana - does it work now?  1.8.4 is rolled out worldwide now

Copper Contributor

This looks like a tremendous addition to O365!  Are Texas's TEKS included in these 109 sets of standards?  

Microsoft

Hi Eric. We have support for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Iron Contributor

I had to sign out of Forms and back in before the ellipsis appeared. However, when I click it nothing happens. I presume it is due to filtering resources per region and that my region (South Africa) doesn't have resources listed. What a pity!

Microsoft

Hi Marius, we don't filter the assessments for regions - you should have access to all of them. To test that everything is working as expected, please install the OneNote Class notebook add-in and let me know if the Education Resources button appears on the Insert menu of OneNote. Thanks!

Iron Contributor

I did see the insert button for Educational Resources in OneNote. I actually stumbled on that before I read any post about it. I then came to Tech Community to find out more about it. When I tried to access Educational Resources from Forms, I wasn't able to.

I can't remember whether the Educational Resources label came up after clicking the ellipsis, but now it does, and when clicking on that I'm taken to the search page for resources. So, success! Thank you.

Copper Contributor

Is this not available any more? We had the Preview enabled and was working.

Copper Contributor

No, we never moved forward with this pilot and closed it down

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