Education Blog articles

Hands-on webinar: Set up your classroom in Teams for Education plus the new Study and Learn Agent

MikeTholfsen — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:44:54 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, August 5th at 8:00 AM Pacific Time for a practical, 60-minute webinar to get your Microsoft Teams classroom ready for the new school year in the Northern hemisphere. Get your class set up in Assignments and Classwork, learn about new tools like Learning Activities, use Student AI Guidelines to set the right expectations for your students, and see how the Study and Learn Agent can be a study partner for your students. Follow along with your own Microsoft 365 Education account as we walk through each one.

Register here: https://aka.ms/August5Training

The session will be recorded and posted to the Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you can watch it later or share it with colleagues.

Agenda - Get your Teams EDU classroom ready and learn about the Study and Learn Agent.
✅ Teams EDU Classwork / Assignments setup
✅ Learning Activities in Assignments and Classwork
✅ Student AI Guidelines in Teams Assignments
✅ Copilot Study and Learn Agent

We look forward to seeing you on August 5th! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community.

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education

Hands-on webinar: Teach Module in M365 Copilot and Copilot Notebooks (available for all educators)

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:50:49 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, July 8th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365 Copilot that is fully rolled out and available to everyone. We will also be covering Copilot Notebooks and the Study Guide which is now also available to all M365 Educators and Students. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the new updates in detail and you can follow-along at home with your own M365 Education account. To reiterate, the Teach Module and Copilot Notebooks are available globally to all educators using Microsoft 365.

And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others.

Register here: https://msit.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/msit.ed7f065d-57a5-437c-ba23-12b0ef06a259@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47

Agenda: How to use the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365.
✅ Lesson plans and the new Keep Going feature
✅ Learning Zone integration
✅ Modifying Existing content
✅ Learning Activities
✅ Coplot Notebooks plus Study Guide

We look forward to having you attend the event! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community.

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education team

What’s New in Microsoft EDU - 23 new features for ISTE 2026

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:50:15 GMT

Welcome to our big ISTE 26 for Microsoft Education blog - we have 23 updates to announce! We’re thrilled to share new AI innovation and insights for education and show them in action next week at ISTELive 26 in Orlando, Florida, US. Join us at the show to learn more and hear about the latest from Microsoft Education at our booth and in dozens of sessions.

Enjoy, and see you there!

ISTE Topics

Microsoft 365 – Learner updates
Microsoft Learning Zone updates
Microsoft 365 – Educator updates
Teach and Learn apps for Windows
Microsoft 365 Copilot Agents
Learning Management System Integration updates

1. Microsoft 365 – Learner updates

Copilot Notebooks and Study guide now available to all Microsoft 365 Students and Educators

Copilot Notebooks are AI-powered workspaces for a subject or group project built on reference materials - bringing together all context behind a topic in one place for you or your group to collaborate on. They are now available to all Microsoft 365 Education licenses (A1, A3, A5) without requiring an additional Copilot Premium license. Also, the Study guide feature in Copilot Notebooks is now generally available. Copilot Notebooks are located in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app waffle.

In Copilot Notebooks, users can add a variety of reference documents, summarize and analyze the content, create mind maps, Study guide, and soon also create Word, Excel, PowerPoint decks.

Study Guide takes the materials learners already have and helps turn them into a collection of organized summary and deep dive topic pages as well as activities including flashcards, quizzes for self-quizzing, fill-in-the-blanks and matching. The important part: it is grounded in the sources you provide.

Get started:

Take the professional development course at aka.ms/notebooksandstudyguidemodule
Learn more about Study guide

Study and Learn Agent in additional languages

The Study and Learn Agent is rolling out additional languages beyond English (US). Once the localized experience is fully rolled out, you can use it at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn after setting your browser or OS to the desired locale supported by the agent. The learning quality of the conversations will continue to get better over time. You can check out the Study & Learn agent launch blog here.

We've also just launched a new white paper called: Learning by design: Learning science foundation of the Study and Learn AgentThis white paper from Microsoft Education shows how the Study and Learn Agent is designed to keep learning with students as they understand, practice, and build mastery through productive effort, while taking its place within the larger education ecosystem as a learner-centric complement to great teaching. Feel free to share feedback here.

2. Microsoft Learning Zone updates

From generation to classroom instruction with Learning Zone

Microsoft Learning Zone is a teaching and learning platform powered by hybrid AI, enabling educators to turn ideas, standards, or trusted content into structured, interactive lessons, deliver them as self-paced or educator-led experiences, and gain formative insights into student progress. By bringing creation, delivery, and feedback into one integrated experience, Learning Zone makes it safe and intuitive to adopt AI in everyday teaching.

Since launching earlier this year, we’ve been listening closely to educators in real classrooms and are excited to introduce new updates that make Learning Zone even more powerful and practical in the classroom.

Experience Learning Zone generation on any Windows 11 PC

Starting at ISTE, educators on any Windows 11 PC can try Learning Zone’s lesson generation experience through August 2027.

Educators can create up to 10-slide lessons and explore AI-powered interactive lesson creation - making it easy to experience the value and bring relevant and custom interactive lessons to their classrooms.

Enabling lesson generation on any Windows 11 device from Learning Zone

Teach in class with educator-led interactive lessons

Learning Zone is expanding beyond self-paced learning with a new live classroom experience.

With educator-led interactive lessons, educators can guide the entire class in real time while enabling every student to actively participate. Students join a lesson lobby and follow along on their own devices, while educators control the pacing and flow of the lesson. When it’s time to practice, students can complete activities at their own pace, while educators receive real-time insights that help them adjust instruction on the spot.

This creates a balanced classroom experience, combining structured teaching with flexible, student-centered engagement.

Educator-led interactive lessons diagram

Accessible where you teach

Learning Zone integrates with the tools educators already use including Teach in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App, Teams Assignments, and leading LMS platforms.

Educators can create interactive lessons directly from Teach in Copilot, as well as create new or assign existing lessons through Teams or via Microsoft LTI in their LMS. Students complete their work in their existing environment, with grades syncing automatically.

These integrations are designed to reduce friction, streamline assignment workflows, and keep teaching and learning in one connected ecosystem.

Learning zone lesson in Teams Assignments flow

Expanded language support

By Back-to-School 2026, Learning Zone will expand generation support to additional languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese, in addition to English and Spanish, supported today, helping more educators create lessons in their native language and support diverse classrooms worldwide.

As a reminder, the Learning Zone experience and ready-to-learn gallery are already supported in 53 different languages.

AI literacy ready-to-learn lessons powered by The Economist

Learning Zone, in collaboration with The Economist Educational Foundation’s Topical Talk, introduces a free classroom-ready AI literacy collection.

It combines Topical Talk’s teacher-led discussion on critical AI use with Learning Zone lessons that build the knowledge students need to contribute confidently and provide practical frameworks for assessing and verifying AI-generated information.

Ready-to-learn lessons powered by The Economist

In addition to the updates announced above, we’ve continued to expand Learning Zone based directly on educator feedback, introducing richer, more flexible lesson creation with new activity types such as Sort, Group, and Match, and enhanced visual support through Bing-sourced and uploaded images. These updates enable educators to create more versatile, engaging, and high-quality lessons with greater ease.

3. Microsoft 365 – Educator updates

Teach in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App

Teach brings AI-powered teaching tools together in one place in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App. You can plan curriculum grounded in your existing materials and standards, create resources, student-facing content, learning activities, and adapt that content to individual or class needs. Teach now includes 11 teaching tools, and here's what's new.

Unit Plans

Unit Plans is the most requested tool in Teach, and it's coming next quarter. It takes you past a single lesson to a full multi-lesson sequence, so you can plan a whole unit aligned to your standards and pacing. You set the unit length, how many lessons you teach each week, and the pieces you want included, and Teach generates a structured, week-by-week plan you can adjust and turn into individual lessons and assessments.

When: Coming next quarter

Teach remembers your classes and settings

Educators no longer need to re-enter their subject and grade level every time they use an AI creation tool. Remember Settings automatically saves past-used Subjects and Grades and carries them across Teach, Teams, LTI, and OneNote. Set your course information once and reuse it, or switch between multiple courses in one click.

This means a teacher with "Biology, Grade 9" and "Chemistry, Grade 11" can move between AI tools - lesson plans, quizzes, flashcards, rubrics - without ever filling in the same fields twice. Course details appear as a chip in the creation form, replacing blank fields with familiar context from day one.

When: In Preview now, Available in August

Teach in your language and region

AI creation tools across Teach, Teams, and Classwork now automatically detect language from the educator's content and browser settings - no manual language picker required. Whether you're working in Spanish, French, Japanese, or any supported language, generated content matches your actual teaching language without extra steps.

For English-speaking educators in the UK, Canada, and Australia, output quality has been improved to reflect regional spelling, date formats, and terminology. If the auto-detected language isn't what you need, a simple override on the result screen lets you change it after generation

When: In Preview now, Available in August

Standards updates

We have been hard at work adding new standards to all our AI features with our partner EdGate, and are happy to share we now support 50+ countries, with more on the way! Standards can be added in Assignments, when creating rubrics, and in the Teach module when creating quizzes, lesson plans, or standards-aligned content. By ISTE, our educational standards coverage will span 54 countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

To request more standards, feel free to give us feedback at https://aka.ms/StandardsFeedback.

Assignments in Teams and Microsoft 365 LTI Updates

Learning Activities in Assignments and Classwork

Learning Activities - flashcards, fill in the blanks, matching, and quizzes - can now be added directly within Assignments and Classwork in Teams. Educators can attach an existing Learning Activity or create a new one without leaving the assignment workflow. Student progress is captured as part of the assignment experience, keeping interactive practice and review in one familiar place.

Students can also create their own Learning Activities from educator-shared resources within an assignment. Share a document or PDF, and students can generate flashcards or study activities from it, supporting self-directed learning without extra setup from the teacher.

When: In Preview now, Available in July

Student AI Guidelines

Educators can now set clear expectations for how students should use AI on each assignment — directly within the assignment creation experience. Four guideline tiers (from "No AI use" to "Full AI use allowed") give teachers flexible, color-coded options they can customize to reflect their school or district policies. Guidelines are visible to students when they open an assignment, reducing confusion and supporting responsible AI use.

When: Available Now

Coming next in August: educators will be able to launch students directly into the Study and Learn Agent from within an assignment.

Standards alignment in Teams Assignments - Instructions and Rubrics

Educators can now add educational standards directly to their assignments in Teams. When you use AI to enhance your instructions, it takes those standards into account. And when you generate a Rubric for the same assignment, it pulls in those same standards as input - so your instructions and rubric stay aligned without extra work.

When: Available Now

Group Assignments Updates

Creating differentiated groups for assignments just got easier. Educators can now reuse student groups from previous assignments - select a past assignment, pick the groups you want, and apply them to a new assignment in seconds. No more recreating the same reading groups, project teams, or skill-level clusters from scratch each time.

After publishing an assignment, educators can move students between groups without recreating the assignment. Need to shift a student from one reading level to another mid-unit? A single "move member" action handles it cleanly while preserving existing student work.

Coming next in August: Learning Groups let educators assign differentiated content (documents, URLs, resources) to each group within a single assignment — so every student gets materials matched to their level, all managed from one assignment view.

When: In Preview now, Available in August

4. Teach and Learn apps on Windows

We’re excited to introduce Teach and Learn on Windows, two new preview experiences designed to help educators and students get started faster with AI-powered teaching and learning. These lightweight experiences live right on the Windows taskbar, giving educators quick access to curriculum creation tools and giving students a simple launchpad into interactive study experiences.

With Teach, educators can quickly access the same teaching tools they’ll find in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to create lesson plans, interactive Learning Zone lessons, quizzes, rubrics, and other curriculum materials, all from the Windows taskbar.

With Learn, students can join and practice learning activities like flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, and matching. For eligible users, Learn will also provide a path to the Study and Learn agent, helping students get guided support as they practice, reflect, and build understanding at their own pace.

Teach and Learn are available as new preview experiences for EDU Insiders today. We look forward to learning from educators and students as these companions evolve.

5. Microsoft 365 Copilot Agents and Grounding

EDU Data Grounding delivers more relevant responses from Copilot, leveraging data generated by Classwork, Assignments, Grades, Insights, and more. Built directly into Copilot with targeted Educator content experience allows for quick and relevant content throughout Microsoft 365 Copilot Experience.

6. Learning Management System Integration updates

Copilot Teaching tools in Microsoft 365 LTI are now available in public preview

Copilot teaching tools are a set of tools available in familiar LMS flows for creating and updating content where educators can easily access AI-powered teaching tools to quickly make modifications to language, reading level, length, difficulty, alignment to relevant standards. They can also create Microsoft Learning Activities like flashcards, fill in the blanks, and matching games that can be shared with a class as study aids embedded directly into course content.

LMS administrators who have deployed the Microsoft 365 LTI in their LMS can enable the Copilot Teaching Tools preview in Admin Settings:

Instructors will see the new options in LMS course content menus where they can also link or embed Microsoft 365 files or create Microsoft Education Assignments where Learning Activities also can be used to engage students in practice. Follow the guide for your LMS to discover Copilot Teaching Tools today!

Learning Zone interactive lessons and Learning Activities now in Microsoft Education Assignments

Instructors can now assign a Learning Zone interactive lesson or add a Learning Activity to an assignment for practice. Microsoft Education assignments integrate seamlessly into your LMS as assigned content and send grades and feedback to the LMS gradebook automatically. With the Assignments app enabled by your LMS administrator in Microsoft 365 LTI, instructors will find Learning Activities and Interactive Lessons available in the Attach menu of Microsoft assignments. Make your next assignment interactive with Learning Zone lessons and Learning Activities.

Supercharge your LMS with Microsoft 365 LTI and AI-powered experiences

Microsoft 365 LTI, Copilot Teaching Tools, and Learning Zone interactive lessons for your LMS don’t require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license – any instructor or student with a Microsoft Academic license (ex: A1, A3, A5) will have access.

Microsoft 365 LTI is LTI® 1.3 Advantage Certified, and works with Canvas, PowerSchool Schoology Learning, Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, Moodle and other platforms that conform to the LTI Advantage standard. LMS administrators can Learn more about deploying Microsoft 365 LTI in your LMS.

LTI® is a trademark of the 1EdTech® Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)

___________________________________________________________

And finally, just to recap all the news we have for you this month, here’s a quick review of all the features that are generally available or are rolling out now:

Microsoft 365 Copilot – Learner updates
- Copilot Notebooks available to all Microsoft 365 Educators and Students
- Study Guide in Copilot Notebooks at general availability
- Study and Learn agent new languages and image support
Microsoft Learning Zone updates
- Educator support for all Windows 11 devices (trial)
- Live Classroom teaching scenarios
- Integrated in Teams, LMSes and Teach Module
- Expanded language support
- New activities like matching, grouping and more
- New Economist lessons available
Microsoft 365 Copilot – Educator updates
- Teach module – Unit Plans preview
- Remember Settings in Teach Module
- Set AI Guidelines for students in Teams Assignments
- Assign Study & Learn agent (later this year)
- Support for new countries for Standards and Curriculum (now over 50 countries)
- Standards integration into Teams Assignments
- Learning Activities integration in Teams Assignments and Classwork
- Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments
- Resue existing groups in Assignments
- Learning Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments (coming soon)
Teach and Learn apps for Windows
- Teach app for Windows (preview this summer)
- Learn app for Windows (preview this summer)
Microsoft 365 Agent updates
- EDU grounding available for Assignments, Grades and Classwork (now at general availability)
Learning Management System Integration
- Copilot Teaching tools (preview)

Have any feedback to share with us? As always, we'd love to hear it! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community.

We are always looking to improve the education experience, and our favorite way to do that is with your support and awesome ideas!

Assignments in Microsoft Teams: Grading, feedback, and AI built into your flow

Leif Brenne — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Assignments is where the daily work of teaching comes together — creating assignments, collecting student work, giving feedback, and tracking grades. Whether your school uses Microsoft Teams for Education or a learning management system like Canvas or Schoology, Assignments works where you already are. In Teams, it's built into every class team. In your LMS, it's available through the Microsoft 365 LTI® app.

Over the past year, we've added AI tools directly into the assignment workflow. They show up while you're writing instructions, building a rubric, or grading student work. Every AI suggestion is editable, and you decide what stays. AI features in Assignments run within the Microsoft 365 education boundary — student data stays within your tenant and is not used to train AI models.

If you're new to Assignments, this MS Learn module walks you through the basics. It covers the full feature set, including recent AI additions.

Building an assignment

Assignment Creation Screen in Teams

You start with a title, instructions, and a due date. From there, you shape the assignment to fit what your students need:

Attach resources — add Word, PowerPoint, PDF, or other files. You control whether students can edit them or just view them. Students can also snap photos of handwritten work and submit them as images.
Add a quiz — attach a Forms quiz and scores sync back to your gradebook automatically. One of the most-used features in Assignments.
Add apps — embed EDU apps like MakeCode, Nearpod, or Wakelet directly in the assignment.
Choose your audience — assign to the full class, a group, or individual students. Group assignments support both group and individual grading.
Include collaboration tools — add a Whiteboard for brainstorming, group work, or individual submissions.

As you write your instructions, AI suggestions appear below the text box — you can add detail, add hints, add steps, add learning objectives, or align to academic standards (Common Core, NGSS, or your local curriculum framework), each with one click. The suggestions build on what you've already written, so they extend your instructions rather than replacing them. Use one, stack a few, or skip them.

Setting expectations with rubrics and guidelines

Rubrics are one of the most effective ways to show students what good work looks like. You can create a rubric from scratch or generate one from a description and a standard. Enter what the assignment is about, select a standard from the built-in library, and Assignments builds a multi-criteria rubric with proficiency levels. The result is fully editable — rename criteria, adjust descriptions, delete rows, or use the Enhance with AI panel to refine specific sections.

For middle and high school classes where students may use AI tools for their work, you can set Student AI Guidelines directly on the assignment. Four levels — from full AI use to no AI — are visible to students before they start working. You can set a default level and copy your settings across classes with Import Settings.

Manage Guidelines in Assignments

Practice, review, and check in

Assignments integrates with tools that help students practice, build skills, and reflect — before, during, or after an assignment.

Learning Activities

Learning Activities let you create study materials directly from the documents you've already attached. Click the menu on an attached file and choose Flashcards, Fill in the Blanks, or Matching — the activity is generated from the document's content. Each activity is editable, so you can adjust cards, add hints, or remove items that don't fit.

Learning Accelerators

Learning Accelerators give students personalized practice with real-time feedback:

Reading Progress — students read aloud, and AI detects fluency patterns like mispronunciations and omissions. You see individual and class-wide progress in Insights.
Math Progress — AI-generated math problems with auto-grading and progress tracking.
Search Progress — students practice search and information literacy skills within an assignment, with scaffolds and class-level comparison data.
Speaker Progress — students practice presenting, and AI coaches them on pace, filler words, and delivery.

You can assign a Reading Progress passage or a Search Progress activity the same way you assign an essay or a project.

Reflect

Reflect brings social-emotional check-ins into the classroom. Students respond to a prompt using emoji-based emotion selectors, and you see class wellbeing trends over time in Insights. You can schedule regular check-ins, run brain breaks, and use the data to spot students who might need extra support — all without leaving Teams.

Grading and giving feedback

When student work comes in, Assignments supports multiple ways to grade and respond:

Rubric scoring — score each criterion, and students see exactly where they landed across proficiency levels.
AI-drafted feedback — after you score a rubric, AI drafts a personalized summary in student-friendly language. It highlights what the student did well, where they can improve, and what to focus on next. You review it, edit anything that doesn't sound right, and return it. The draft is a starting point for your own voice.
Inline markup — highlight, comment, track changes, and use digital ink directly in Word and PowerPoint submissions.
PDF annotation — mark up PDF submissions.
Video and audio feedback — record a short video or audio response for a more personal touch. These options give students feedback they can listen to, which is especially helpful for younger learners, students with reading difficulties, or anyone who benefits from hearing tone and emphasis.
General comments — a text field for overall feedback.

Students can revise and resubmit, and you can return work multiple times. The goal is a draft-feedback-revision loop — students improve their work based on your input, not just a final grade.

Student review written feedback

You can also configure grading to match your school's policies — weighted categories, letter grades, complete/incomplete, or custom text instead of points.

Built-in accessibility

Immersive Reader is built into Assignments, so students can have any assignment text read aloud, adjust font size and spacing, highlight parts of speech, or translate content into their language — right where they're working. Combined with video and audio feedback, students who struggle with reading or written feedback still get the full experience.

Keeping track across classes

If you teach multiple sections, the cross-class view lets you see all assignments across every class from one place — Upcoming, Ready to grade, Past due, Returned, and Drafts — without switching between teams. You can also view assignments within a single class when you need to focus on one group.

Works in your LMS

If your school runs a learning management system, the Microsoft 365 LTI® app brings Assignments and other Microsoft 365 education tools directly into your LMS through the LTI 1.3 standard. You can create assignments with AI-generated rubrics, collect submissions, and give AI-drafted feedback — all without leaving your LMS.

Assignment Creation Screen in M365 LTI

The Microsoft 365 LTI app works with:

Canvas by Instructure
PowerSchool Schoology Learning
Blackboard by Anthology
Brightspace by D2L
Moodle™

Your IT admin handles the initial setup. Once installed, educators and students access Microsoft tools from within the LMS. For setup guidance, see the Microsoft 365 LTI deployment guide.

Getting started

If your school uses Microsoft Teams for Education, Assignments is built in — look for the Assignments tab in any class team. If your school runs an LMS, ask your IT admin about the Microsoft 365 LTI app.

Assignments and its AI features are included with Microsoft 365 Education A1, A3, and A5 licenses at no additional cost.

Helpful Links

Assignments

Learning Activities and Learning Accelerators

Learning Accelerators for Educators (MS Learn) — Reading Progress, Math Progress, Search Progress, Speaker Progress, Reflect, and Insights
Build social and emotional skills with Reflect (MS Learn)
Leverage data for action with Insights (MS Learn)

LMS integration

Microsoft 365 LTI deployment guide

Community

Join our EDU Insider Program: aka.ms/joinEIP

Have questions or want to share how you're using Assignments in your classroom? Drop them in the comments below — I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Leif Brenne

What's new in Assignments: interactive lessons, localized content, and smarter AI tools

Leif Brenne — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:40:35 GMT

Assignments in Microsoft Teams and through the Microsoft 365 LTI app has shipped a set of updates that connect interactive learning content directly into the assignment workflow, improve content quality across English-speaking regions, and give educators more control over AI-generated output.

All of these features are available now for every Microsoft Education license (A1, A3, A5) at no extra cost.

Watch a quick walkthrough of all the updates: What's new in Assignments

Learning Zone interactive lessons in Assignments

Educators using a Copilot+ PC can turn any teaching idea into an interactive lesson — with slides, quizzes, and activities — using the Learning Zone app. Those lessons now connect directly into the assignment workflow.

When creating an assignment, educators see a new Learning Zone resource option. Pick a lesson, and it's attached to the assignment. Students complete the interactive lesson right inside their assignment in Teams or through the LMS, without leaving. When they finish, scores sync automatically — the student's completion percentage becomes their assignment grade.

A few things to know:

You need a Copilot+ PC to create lessons. Students can complete them on any device.
If you don't have any lessons yet, the picker will link you to download the Learning Zone app.
Students can also open the lesson in the Learning Zone app on Windows if they prefer.

Learn more: Add a Learning Zone lesson to an assignment

Student feedback view update

We've updated how students see feedback on returned assignments. The view now reorganizes to put what matters most front and center:

Feedback, feedback resources, rubric, and grades take the main space.
Instructions and resources collapse into side sections — still accessible, just not competing for attention.

Before this change, students saw everything at once — feedback mixed in with instructions, attachments, and rubrics. Many students struggled to find the feedback you spent time writing. Now it's the first thing they see when they open a returned assignment.

This is already active for everyone. Nothing to turn on.

Standards alignment across Instructions and Rubrics

Educators can now add educational standards directly to their assignment. When you use AI to enhance your instructions, it takes those standards into account. And when you generate a Rubric for the same assignment, it pulls in those same standards as input — so your instructions and rubric stay aligned without extra work.

We've also made a few other improvements to AI Instructions:

Describe changes to tweak the output. After the AI generates a suggestion, you can describe what you want changed in a text field and re-generate. Want it shorter? More scaffolded? Focused on a specific concept? Type what you'd like changed and get an updated version — no need to start over.
Shorter, more focused suggestions. When you use Add Detail, Add Sparkle, Add Hints, or other enhancements, the output stays closer to what you actually need rather than over-expanding your instructions.

Learn more: Standards in Assignments and the Teach module

English locale support across Assignments and the Teach module in Microsoft 365 Copilot

AI features across both Assignments and the Teach module in Microsoft 365 Copilot now support English (UK), English (Canada), and English (Australia) in addition to English (US).

Language is automatically selected based on your browser language settings. If your browser is set to en-GB, the AI generates content using British English. If you've used Teach before, it defaults to your previously used language. You can switch anytime from the Language dropdown when creating content.

We've also updated the age/year selection to match what's appropriate for each locale — so you'll see "Year 9" instead of "Grade 9" when using English (UK), for example.

Resources

Copilot Notebooks and Study guide now available to Copilot Chat users

Anoo_Padte — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 02:31:33 GMT

Every student knows the feeling: the test is coming, the materials are everywhere— and the hardest part is not finding information, it is knowing where to start. There is a PDF from the teacher. Slides from last week. A Word document with notes. Each piece has value. But studying means turning all of it into something usable: what to review first, what connects together, what still feels fuzzy, and what to practice learning.

That is why we are excited to share two updates for education.

First, Copilot Notebooks is now rolling out to Copilot Chat users, available with Microsoft 365 Education licenses. Copilot Notebooks are AI-powered workspaces for a subject or group project built on reference materials—bringing together all context behind a topic in one place for you or your study group and Copilot to collaborate on. This addresses one of the top asks we have heard from Microsoft 365 Education customers: bring the power of Copilot Notebooks to the education licenses schools already use.

This education expansion builds on the broader Copilot Notebooks announcement that brings Notebooks to all education and enterprise Copilot Chat users, including new ways to work with your own materials in Notebooks with mind maps, Study Guides, and coming soon - the ability to create Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. You can read that announcement in the broader commercial Copilot Notebooks blog.

Copilot Notebooks are available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot web and desktop versions for Education users. Expect them to be available in Education tenants in the next two weeks. They will be available in OneNote in the weeks to follow.

Get started: Find Copilot Notebooks located in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app waffle.

Second, Copilot Notebook Study Guide is now generally available both for education and enterprise users. Study Guide is an AI-powered feature in Notebooks that turns the learning materials you provide into a complete, interactive study companion. Organized, editable, grounded in your references. Ready when you are.

For Education IT admins - what you need to know

Study guide lives inside Copilot Notebooks. Copilot Notebooks are available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Copilot Notebooks are located in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app waffle.

With this update, Copilot Notebooks are available to Microsoft 365 Education A1, A3, and A5 users.

Study guide is available for education users ages 13+. Student accounts need the right Age Group in Microsoft Entra ID, and K-12 students ages 13-17 need Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat enabled by an IT admin before they can use Copilot Notebooks and Study Guide.

No additional deployment is needed for Study Guide. Study Guide is rolling out to enterprise and education customers starting June 11. It may take a few days to show up in your account.

What Study guide does

Study Guide takes the materials learners already have and helps turn them into a collection of organized study topics and activities of your choice.

Drop in PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or Excel files. Study Guide reads across those references, identifies the key ideas, and creates a multi-page study guide inside the notebook.

The important part: it is grounded in the sources you provide. It is not pulling random facts from the internet. Summary pages and Topic pages include citations back to the original materials, so learners can check where information came from and return to the source when something needs a closer look.

That matters for learning. It helps students stay connected to the actual course materials. It helps educators trust what students are practicing from turns citation-checking into a habit, not an afterthought.

What is available in Study guide

Study Guide creates materials that span all phases of learning: understand, practice, and test.

Understand: deepen your knowledge of the material

Summary page: Start with a high-level overview of the materials you added. The Summary includes an overview, why the topic matters, key topics, a glossary, common misconceptions, and citations back to the source materials.
Topic pages: Study Guide creates deeper pages for the major topics it finds in your content. These pages work like mini-chapters that cover content across all your references. They include explanations, sub-topic deep dives, worked examples, questions that make you think critically and analyze concepts, short exercises, and citations throughout.

Practice: strengthen recall, and make connections

Flashcards: Study Guide generates interactive cards from the learner's materials. Learners can flip cards, use hints, and edit the set so the wording matches how they think about the concept.
Fill in the blanks: Key terms are removed from important sentences, and learners choose from a set of distraction answers to complete sentences. It is especially useful for processes, and sequences of events where the order and relationships matter.
Matching: Study Guide creates matching tiles that ask learners to connect related ideas: terms to definitions, causes to effects, structures to functions, or concepts to examples.

Test: check what is sticking

Quiz: Study Guide creates a Microsoft Forms-powered quiz with questions generated from the materials. Learners can answer directly from the page, review results, and see explanations for multiple-choice answers. Results are private to the learner unless they choose to share them.

Every one of these formats is designed to move studying from passive review to active practice. Not just rereading or highlighting. Actually trying to remember, connect, explain, and check.

Study Guide supports 21 languages at launch: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English (US), Estonian, French (Canada), French (France), German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmal, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

That means students can study from the materials they already use, in the language they already learn in, without having to move everything into a separate tool.

For educators

A few ways you can bring Study guide to your students or use it yourself:

Get started by taking the Microsoft Learn course. Available now at aka.ms/notebooksandstudyguidemodule
Point learners to a specific study moment. "Before Friday's quiz, add this week's slides and generate flashcards" is more useful than "use AI to study."
Encourage active practice. Flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, matching, and quizzes help your students retrieve information from memory instead of only rereading it.
Use citations as an AI literacy moment. Study Guide shows where information came from. That opens a natural classroom conversation about checking sources, verifying AI-generated content, and staying grounded in the material.
Keep assessment separate from practice. Study Guide quizzes are for self-checking. They are not a gradebook, and quiz results are private unless a student chooses to share them.
Keep building your own AI fluency.

Study Guide is built with privacy, safety, and learner control in mind. Study Guide pages are private by default, stored in the learner's Microsoft 365 notebook, and can be edited or deleted by the learner. Prompts and outputs are not used to train AI models, and quiz results are private unless a learner chooses to share them.

Get started

Take the professional development course at aka.ms/notebooksandstudyguidemodule
Learn more about Study guide

Anoo Padte is Principal Product Manager for AI in Education at Microsoft.

Making Academic Standards More Accessible

MikeMast — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:01:25 GMT

Why standards matter

Academic standards are the shared language that connects curriculum, instruction, and assessment. When educators can easily access and apply them:

Lesson planning becomes more intentional. You design instruction around clear learning goals rather than guessing what to cover.
Assessment aligns with instruction. Quizzes, rubrics, and assignments reflect what students are actually expected to demonstrate.
AI-powered tools become more relevant. AI-generated content is grounded in real curriculum expectations, not generic suggestions.
Collaboration improves. Teachers across grade levels and departments can speak the same language about what students should know and do.

How Microsoft Education uses standards

Standards are woven into the experiences educators use every day.

In the Teach module and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can align lesson plans to specific standards by location, subject, and grade band, use the "Align to Standards" tool to refine lesson instructions, and generate quizzes and rubrics grounded in standards.

In Assignments in Teams for Education and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can tag assignments with curriculum expectations, build standards-aligned rubrics, and create a clear thread from instruction to assessment.

Across AI-powered workflows, standards can serve as grounding data that helps make generated lesson plans, quizzes, and rubrics more relevant to real curriculum expectations. This reflects Microsoft’s broader approach to AI in education: using AI to support educators with useful, contextual assistance while helping institutions maintain alignment with their instructional goals, policies, and professional judgment. Educators can select standards by location, subject, and language.

Expanding coverage through partnership with EdGate

Making standards useful in digital tools globally requires more than a large catalog. It requires structured, machine-readable data, ongoing maintenance, and a partner with deep expertise in education standards. EdGate has spent years building and maintaining one of the largest catalogs of digitized standards in education technology. Microsoft partnered with EdGate to help make that infrastructure more accessible inside the workflows educators and institutions already use.

Through this partnership, Microsoft has significantly expanded the set of standards EdGate offers, especially internationally. Together, we have grown coverage to include:

All 50 U.S. states, including Common Core, NGSS, and state-specific frameworks
70+ countries, with international standards covering core subjects, vocational education, and qualification frameworks
Hundreds of supplemental frameworks, from career and technical education to world languages and the arts

We continue to expand coverage with new international standards rolling out regularly.

EdGate offers access to over 5 million standard statements, aggregating and normalizing global standards for consistent delivery across platforms. Their capabilities include a comprehensive standards catalog, standards authoring tools used by ministries of education, API-based access for platform integration, and certified CASE 1.1 compliance.

Microsoft and EdGate are partnering to make a select set of standards freely available to education institutions, lowering barriers for educators and developers who want to explore standards-aligned workflows without a commercial commitment. To expand the impact even further, EdGate is piloting a project in 1EdTech's CASE Global Ecosystem initiative, to demonstrate how interoperable, machine-readable frameworks can improve the discoverability, alignment, and portability of learning and credentialing data across platforms, institutions and borders.

The CASE format: Why it matters

CASE stands for Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange, an open standard from 1EdTech that defines how learning outcomes and standards are represented in a machine-readable, interoperable format.

Why does CASE matter?

Machine-readability: Platforms, AI tools, and learning management systems can read, search, and apply standards programmatically.
Interoperability: Standards move between systems. An assignment tagged with a standard in Microsoft Teams can be understood by an LMS, a reporting tool, or a curriculum mapping platform without manual re-entry.
Cross-region equivalence: CASE enables comparing and mapping standards across countries and frameworks.

EdGate is a certified CASE 1.1 provider, meaning the standards they deliver to Microsoft (and to the broader ecosystem) follow this open, interoperable format. The expanded catalog we have built together benefits not just Microsoft's products, but the entire ecosystem of education technology that relies on structured standards data.

A shared commitment to open standards

Microsoft is proud to be a Contributing Member of 1EdTech, the organization that stewards CASE and other critical interoperability standards for education technology, including LTI, OneRoster, and Open Badges. By collaborating with fellow 1EdTech members like EdGate, we ensure that investments in standards infrastructure benefit educators everywhere, regardless of which platforms or tools they use.

When standards are open, structured, and interoperable, everyone wins: educators spend less time on manual alignment, developers can build smarter tools, and students benefit from instruction that is intentionally connected to what they are expected to learn.

What this means for educators

Within Microsoft Education, you do not need to think about CASE or data formats to benefit from this work. What you will see is:

More standards available in the Teach module and Assignments, covering more countries, subjects, and grade bands
AI-powered experiences that are better grounded in your actual curriculum
Less manual work translating curriculum documents into classroom materials

We are committed to continuing this investment: expanding coverage, improving the experience, and working with partners like EdGate and the 1EdTech community to make standards-aligned teaching easier for educators everywhere.

Helpful links

Have questions or feedback about standards in Microsoft Education? Drop a comment below or submit a request through our Standards Feedback form.

Set clear AI expectations for every assignment with Student AI Guidelines

Leif Brenne — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:30:34 GMT

The challenge: students don't know where they stand with AI

Every educator has a different approach to AI in their classroom. Some want students using it freely. Others want AI limited to brainstorming or editing. Some assignments shouldn't involve AI at all.

The problem? Students are left guessing. Educators have been piecing together workarounds — writing AI policies into assignment instructions, referencing school handbooks, or adding disclaimers to rubrics. None of these are built into the assignment itself, and students often miss them entirely.

Student AI Guidelines in Assignments

Student AI Guidelines give educators a structured way to set AI expectations directly inside an assignment in Microsoft Teams. When creating an assignment, educators now see a new option to set a guideline level with suggested text:

Full AI use allowed. Students can use Copilot for any part of the assignment.
AI for editing only. Students write their own work first, then use Copilot to polish, revise, or check grammar.
AI for brainstorming only. Students can use Copilot to generate ideas or explore topics, but the final work should be their own.
No AI. The assignment should be completed without AI assistance.

Student AI Guidelines are available for all grade levels, on desktop and mobile. All students in the assignment see the same guideline.

A note on what these guidelines are — and aren't. Student AI Guidelines are a communication tool, not a lockdown. They set clear expectations that students see in the assignment, but they don't technically block access to AI tools. They work the same way a teacher's verbal instruction does: "Here's what I expect for this assignment." The value is in making that expectation visible, consistent, and built into the assignment itself.

These are starting points, not fixed rules. Each level comes with suggested text that educators can edit freely to match their school's policies, terminology, or classroom norms. If your school uses different language around AI use — or has its own framework — update the text to reflect that. The feature adapts to your school, not the other way around.

Even if your school hasn't enabled Copilot, Student AI Guidelines give you a structured way to communicate AI expectations to students — whether that's encouraging responsible AI use or formalizing a no-AI policy.

What students see

When an educator sets a guideline, students see it in their assignment view — no hunting through instructions or attachments. The guideline card shows the educator's expectations and, for levels that allow AI use, a direct button to launch Copilot Chat.

The Copilot launch button appears for students aged 13 and older at schools where an IT admin has enabled Copilot. If your school hasn't set up Copilot yet, check out the Copilot setup guide for IT admins to get started. If Copilot isn't enabled, students still see the guideline — just without the launch button.

If no guideline is set, nothing changes — the student experience stays exactly as it is today.

Save time: set a default and reuse across classes

Two features help you avoid repeating setup work:

Set as default. Any guideline level — including "No AI" — can be set as the default for all new assignments you create. If your school's policy is that most assignments should restrict AI use, set that as your default and you're covered. You can always override it on individual assignments when you want to allow more (or less) AI use.

Import Settings. Once you've configured your Student AI Guidelines in one class, you can apply those same settings to other classes using Import Settings. This copies your guideline levels and custom text across classes so you don't have to re-create them each time. Learn more: Import Settings in Assignments and Grades.

Why this matters

This feature sits at the intersection of two things educators have been asking for: clarity around AI use, and an easy on-ramp to Copilot. Instead of competing with third-party AI tools through restriction, Student AI Guidelines give educators a way to channel AI use purposefully — on their terms, per assignment, with clear communication to students.

Resources

Set Student AI Guidelines on and assignment in Microsoft Teams

Manage Student AI Guidelines in Assignments

Study and Learn Agent: your study coach, built for learning

Anoo_Padte — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:20:37 GMT

It's 11 pm. A student is at the kitchen table with a chemistry problem they can't crack, an essay due tomorrow, and a quiz in the morning. They open their laptop, open an AI chatbot, and in thirty seconds, they have an answer, an essay, and a study guide.

The thinking didn't happen. The grade might still come.

That moment is why so many educators and IT leaders feel a knot in their stomach about AI in the classroom. The concerns are real, and we built with them firmly in view.

Now picture the same student, same kitchen table, same 11 pm. This time the Study and Learn Agent is beside them. Patient. Tireless. Knows the material because the student is studying with their own notes. Asks the right question at the right moment. Pushes them to try first, then helps them see what they missed. Quizzes them. Introduces flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks and matching activities. Helps them build and check their understanding.

The student does the thinking. The Study and Learn Agent coaches the thinking.

Most students have not had access to that kind of support. Potential is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.

Today, with the general availability of the Study and Learn Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, every student K12 and Higher Education with a Microsoft Education license can get personalized coaching when they need it, where they need it, at no extra cost.

Study and Learn Agent is in the left navigation and works across any subject the learner is studying. It explains concepts, supports writing without doing the writing for the students, gives step-by-step coaching on problems, generates flashcards, runs quizzes, and creates activities to build and check understanding. The agent is designed to lead with a question so the learner stays in the driver's seat. It is available in English (US) and coming to additional languages in the coming weeks.

⚙️For IT admins — read this first

Study and Learn Agent runs inside Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. For your K-12 students aged 13–17, Copilot Chat is OFF by default. You have to turn it on. Until you do, students in your tenant cannot access Study and Learn.

The good news: Study and Learn is available to all licenses A1 / A3 / A5, and the agent is available from the left navigation bar of M365 Copilot app and in the Chat dropdown at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn.

Action: Enable Copilot Chat for your 13–17 student group in the Microsoft 365 admin center using these resources:

Full step-by-step video tutorial: https://aka.ms/enablecopilotchatvideo
IT documentation:
- Education Tenant Identifier
- Student Age Groups

Find Study and Learn in the left navigation pane and in the Chat dropdown

🎉What is available at GA

Conversations that coach: Scaffolded conversations on any subject or topic K12 through HED for:

Understanding concepts
Working through step-by-step problems
Getting writing support

The agent recognizes the kind of help a learner needs and adapts the conversation accordingly. Soon, images will show inline in explanations to make abstract concepts concrete — especially for visual subjects like biology, geography, and chemistry.

Scaffolded coaching conversations that lead with questions

Practice activities that stick:

Flashcards to learn terms and definitions, vocabulary, and recall facts
Quizzes with multiple choice and open-ended questions with per-answer explanations
Fill-in-the-blank for understanding how things work, or the sequence of connected events or facts in a process
Matching activities that connect terms to definitions, causes to effects, concepts to examples — building the mental web that makes knowledge usable
All activities are created with the learner’s own materials, or with just a topic name. Quizzes can also be created using a web-linked resource
Students can chat with the agent during and after completing an activity to get immediate and remediation help with the agent still not giving away answers

Matching activity embedded in a Study and Learn conversationFill-in-the-blanks activity embedded in a Study and Learn conversation

Responsible AI and data privacy: Study and Learn is built into the Microsoft 365 Education environment that schools already manage, giving IT administrators familiar controls and enterprise-grade data and privacy protection rooted in Microsoft's responsible AI principles. Students get a structured, accountable AI experience, and schools get a credible, learning-first option they can deploy with confidence. An AI literacy resource teaches responsible AI use from the very first interaction.

Coming soon!

Inline images: GA ships with links to images, images embedded in the flow of the conversation are coming soon
Multiple languages: Study and Learn has been optimized for and Generally Available in English (US). Additional languages will become available in the coming weeks.
Explanation and engagement callouts: Visual call outs for questions, tips and moments of persistence

💡Built on learning science

The pedagogy is the product.

The Study and Learn Agent is grounded in four research-based principles about what makes learning stick. They aren't a layer on top of the experience — they shape what the agent does in every interaction.

Adaptive scaffolding: meeting students where they are by activating what they already know, then providing enough support to stretch them into what's next. In practice, this is why the agent opens a chemistry problem by asking what the learner already understands about molar mass — not by launching into a worked solution. It then tunes its support — worked examples, hints, or step-by-step guidance — to match. The result is a learner who stays productively engaged instead of overwhelmed or under-challenged.

Explanations and questions that develop critical thinking

Productive struggle: asking before telling, so students retrieve, attempt, and reason their way toward answers. This is why the agent invites a first attempt before offering help, and why it surfaces a misconception as a question rather than a correction. Mistakes become data, not failure — the moments where actual learning happens.

Active learning: practice that sticks, with retrieval-based activities including flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, quizzes, and matching. The agent generates activities from the learner's own materials and lets them re-attempt the items they missed. Learners can pause during an activity and chat with the agent about a card they don't understand — building clarity in the moment, without the agent giving the answer away. Pulling knowledge out of memory, with feedback in the loop, is what builds durable understanding.

Flashcards embedded in a Study and Learn conversation

Quizzes with True/False, multiple choice and open-ended questions

Application and transfer: giving students the agency to go deeper, apply their learning, or reinforce it with an activity. This is why the agent invites learners to teach concepts back, apply ideas to new problems, and connect what they're studying to real-world contexts. It's the kind of work that builds flexible understanding beyond a single test.

We built this with learning science researchers, cognitive scientists, and educators in the room from the beginning.

👩🏽‍🏫For educators

The best way to understand what Study and Learn does differently is to spend a few minutes with it. Open it at aka.ms/studyandlearn and try it with your Microsoft Education account in the M365 Copilot app on a unit you're teaching next week. Take the professional development course at aka.ms/studyandlearnmodule to get a deep dive overview, and earn a badge!
Most educators tell us this is the moment the design clicks — noticing where the agent asks a question instead of giving an answer.

A few things educators in our preview have found useful:

Pointing learners to it for a specific moment in an assignment can be more effective than a blanket "you can use this." Something as simple as "if you get stuck on problem 4, ask Study and Learn to walk you through it after you've taken a first attempt" tends to shape how learners engage.
The activities lend themselves to specific moments. Flashcards before a vocabulary check. Matching for a unit on cell biology. A quiz the day before a test, with the agent's per-answer explanations as a self-review loop.
The agent itself is a useful AI literacy artifact. Some educators use its behavior as a discussion starter — "notice that it didn't give you the answer? Why do you think that is?" — to open up conversations about how to use AI well.
A short framing for learners helps a lot. Naming up front that the agent will ask questions before helping, push them to try first, and quiz them on what they missed — and why that's the design — shifts how learners engage. One small tip worth passing on: the more specifically a learner can name what's tripping them up, the better the agent can help. "I can't picture what's happening here" gives the agent more to work with than "I don't get it."
Feedback shapes what we ship next. There's an OCV form linked from inside the agent, and educator input has driven much of the roadmap so far.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾The bet

For decades, the students who got one-on-one coaching outperformed the students who didn't. That gap was a function of access — who had a tutor, who had a teacher with bandwidth, who had a parent at the kitchen table. AI is the first technology in the history of education with a real shot at closing it.

That's the bet we are making. AI as a coach. Built on learning science. Built into the tools schools already trust. Available to every student, not just the ones whose families can afford it.

Study and Learn is the first move. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot. Look in the left navigation. The coach is there as long as Copilot Chat is enabled. Get going at https://aka.ms/studyandlearn

Resources:

Anoo Padte is Principal Product Manager for AI in Education at Microsoft.

Introducing Learning Activities: AI-powered practice for educators and students

SamanthaFisher — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:59:55 GMT

Practice is where learning actually happens. It’s one thing to read through a unit or sit through a lesson; it’s another to retrieve that knowledge on demand. But building good practice materials takes time that educators rarely have, and most students don’t know where to start when it comes to studying on their own.

Learning Activities is designed to close that gap for both.

With Learning Activities, educators can paste in lesson content and generate a shareable practice activity in under three minutes. Students can do the same with their own notes to study independently, or dive straight into an activity a teacher shared with them. The AI does the heavy lifting: creating flashcards, fill-in-the-blank exercises, matching games, and quizzes from whatever content you bring.

Today we’re walking through everything that’s available, who it’s for, and how to get started.

What are Learning Activities?

Learning Activities is a web-based tool powered by Microsoft AI. You bring the content, and it generates four types of interactive practice activities:

Flashcards: Term and definition, question and answer, or multiple-choice cards. Great for vocabulary, concepts, and content review.
Fill in the Blanks: AI removes key words from your content and learners drag them back into the correct blanks. Adjustable difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Challenging.
Matching: A timed game where players match terms with definitions, with a leaderboard for friendly competition.
Quizzes: Students generate their own multiple-choice quizzes from study materials or even just a topic description. A powerful self-study tool.

Each activity type targets a different learning moment, from first-pass recognition with flashcards to timed recall under pressure with Matching. Because the AI handles the generation, the whole thing takes seconds.

Four activity types, one seamless experience

Flashcards

Educators can create a set of flashcards from lesson notes or an uploaded document and share them with the class in minutes. Students can also create their own sets to study independently. Choose from term and definition, Q&A, or multiple-choice card formats, or mix and match them in a single set.

During practice, students flip through cards and sort them into “I know this” and “Still learning” piles. After finishing, they see a summary of where they stand and can retry only the cards they missed.

Fill in the Blanks

AI analyzes your content, removes key words, and builds exercises where learners drag the correct words back into the blanks. Educators can choose to let the AI lightly rephrase content for better exercises or keep the original text exactly as written. Three difficulty levels give you control over the challenge.

Learners get immediate feedback after each exercise: correct answers appear in green, missed ones in red. Then they move on to the next passage.

Matching

The Matching game generates term-and-definition pairs from your content and turns them into a timed race. Each round randomly selects six terms from the full set, so replaying the same activity stays fresh. A leaderboard shows the top five fastest times, and players can use a custom nickname or stay anonymous.

Quizzes (students only)

Quizzes are created by students, for students. They paste in their study notes, describe a topic they want to be tested on, or upload a file, and the AI generates a multiple-choice quiz. Students pick 10, 15, or 20 questions and can turn on Practice mode for question-by-question feedback with instant retries, rather than waiting until the end to see results.

No teacher setup required. Students can go from “I have a test tomorrow” to practicing in about a minute.

End-to-end demo of Learning Activities

Who can use Learning Activities?

Learning Activities is built for three audiences:

Educators can create and share Flashcards, Fill in the Blanks, and Matching activities with their students. After students practice, educators see lightweight insights on completions, average scores, and which specific items gave students the most trouble.

Students (all ages) can practice activities shared with them by an educator using a join code or direct link.

Students (age 13+) who have access to Copilot chat can create their own Flashcards, Fill in the blanks, Matching activities and Quizzes for independent study.

Creating activities requires access to Copilot Chat. Practicing activities shared by others does not.

Enterprise users can use Learning Activities to build practice materials for onboarding, training, or personal development. Same tools, same AI, applied to professional content.

Where to find Learning Activities

Start on the web

The best place to get started is the Learning Activities web app, accessible in the education and productivity sections of the Microsoft apps list and at:

learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft

From the home screen, you can create a new activity, browse everything you’ve created or saved, and join an activity using a code a teacher shared with you.

In the Teach module

If you already use the Teach module in Microsoft 365, Learning Activities is built right in. Select Learning Activities in Teach and generate an activity directly from your content without switching apps.

Coming soon: Study and Learn agent

We’re actively integrating Learning Activities into the Study and Learn agent, so students will be able to generate practice activities inline as part of their AI-assisted study sessions, right where they’re already working.

Also available in Classwork in Teams for Education

Learning Activities is also available through Classwork in Teams for Education, so teachers who work primarily in Teams can create and share activities without leaving the apps they’re already in.

Any activity you create, whether from the web app, the Teach module, Teams, or the Study and Learn agent, shows up in your Learning Activities home screen. Everything stays in one place.

Getting started: educators

Go to learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft.
Select + New Activity and choose a type: Flashcards, Fill in the Blanks, or Matching.
Paste in your content or upload a file (Word, PDF, PowerPoint, or text, up to 100,000 characters).
Select your language and any format options, then select Generate.
Review the output, make any edits, and select Save Activity.
From the activity overview page, select Share to get a join code or share link for your students.

That’s it. First activity typically takes under three minutes.

Getting started: students

Go to learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft.
If your teacher shared an activity: select Join in the upper right, enter the join code, or open the direct link they sent you.
To create your own study set: select + New Activity, choose Flashcards, Fill in the blanks, Matching or Quiz, paste in your notes, and generate.

Getting started: enterprise users

Enterprise users can access Learning Activities at learningactivities.edu.cloud.microsoft with their Microsoft 365 account. Create activities from internal documents, onboarding materials, or training content the same way an educator would. Activities live in your My Activities tab and can be shared with teammates using a join code or link.

For IT admins: managing Learning Activities for your organization

Learning Activities is enabled by default for eligible Microsoft 365 tenants. As an admin, you can turn it on or off for your entire organization from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Directions are here: Manage Microsoft 365 for Education AI Features - M365 Education | Microsoft Learn.

View insights after your students practice

Once students complete activities you’ve shared, head back to the activity overview page to see how it went.

Insights available today:

Students started and completed
Average score
The specific cards, blanks, or questions students found most challenging

We’re continuing to build on this over time based on what educators tell us they need.

Helpful links

Learning Activities: Learning Activities - Microsoft Support
Flashcards: Create Flashcards with AI - Microsoft Support
Fill in the blanks: Create Fill in the blanks with AI - Microsoft Support
Matching: Create Matching game with AI - Microsoft Support
Quizzes: Create Quizzes using AI for Students - Microsoft Support
Manage Microsoft 365 for Education AI Features - M365 Education | Microsoft Learn
Learning Activities web app

Have questions or feedback? Share them in the comments below — our team reads every one.

Hands-on webinar: Study and Learn agent in M365 Copilot

MikeTholfsen — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:46:12 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, May 13th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new Study & Learn agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is about to become available for all students 13+ and educators. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the Study & Learn agent, which is purpose-built for learning. The experience goes beyond just answering questions and instead guiding students through concepts with step-by-step support, interactive activities like quizzes and flashcards, and conversations grounded in learning science. The Study & Learn agent will be globally available by the time of this webinar on May 13th, 2026.

We will also be providing links for professional development credit at this session. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others.

What we will cover
✅ Introduce the new Study & Learn agent
✅Understand concept/question, FC and Quiz, Matching and FIB
✅IT admin motions for enabling Copilot Chat
✅Learning Activities for students hands-on
✅CPNBs and Study Guide slides and demo

📅 Date: Tuesday, May 13th
⏰ Time: 8:00 AM Pacific
🔗 Register: https://msit.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/msit.954c5c3b-cbc0-458d-9739-49e3e8b4baf7@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47

Accelerating the Flow of Learning

MikeTholfsen — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:07:39 GMT

By Vince Frankson, Authentica Solutions | Guest Post via the Microsoft Education Blog

Education technology leaders are not short on vision; they are short on time. They know exactly what their Microsoft 365 environment is capable of. What they deserve are better tools, smarter automation, and a partner that shows up ready to serve.

At Authentica Solutions, we pride ourselves on our culture of servant leadership, not just as a slogan, but as our guiding principle. Our mission is to support and serve district technology teams, ensuring that technology enhances their valuable work rather than making it more complex.

Everything we build is organized around one purpose: accelerating the flow of learning. Not technology for its own sake... tools and services focused at getting teachers back to teaching, students back to learning, and district leaders back to the decisions that matter most.

With the school year winding down and Back to School planning already on the horizon, there is no better moment to look at where your Microsoft 365 environment stands, and how the right tools and the right team can compress your timeline, free your people, and make this the smoothest Back to School launch yet.

District Technology Teams Deserve Better Tools

K-12 technology leaders oversee complex systems, sometimes across multiple campuses, and support a wide range of users. While Microsoft 365 offers advanced features, many remain underused due to the time and expertise required for full implementation.

Microsoft’s School Data Sync (SDS) is a great example. It is a genuinely powerful free service that automates the flow of student roster and identity data from your Student Information System (SIS) into Microsoft Entra ID, provisioning Teams classrooms, Intune device groups, SharePoint sites, and OneNote Class Notebooks automatically, at scale. The platform is exceptional. Fully configuring it, keeping it healthy across an academic year, and extending its value into the rest of the data ecosystem is specialized work that deserves specialized support.

Authentica addresses this gap by providing support so school IT teams can focus on high-impact tasks, helping educators and students achieve more.

Authentica seed™: Built to Accelerate the Flow of Learning

Authentica seed™ is Authentica’s Education Intelligence Cloud Service, designed to streamline learning by enabling clean, automated, bidirectional data pipelines. This allows teachers to access rosters quickly, students to begin learning immediately, and administrators to monitor instruction in real time, accelerating progress for everyone.

Getting Your Data into Microsoft 365

seed™ sits between your SIS and SDS, handling data preparation, mapping, and delivery so your team can focus on higher-value work. Districts that previously invested significant time in validation cycles and configuration troubleshooting are reaching full value in a fraction of the time.

Automated SIS-to-SDS delivery with built-in validation, so errors are caught before they ever reach your tenant.
Support for OneRoster API and CSV formats across all major SIS platforms, meeting your district where it already is.
Automatic provisioning of users, classes, and groups across Microsoft Entra ID, Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and Intune for Education.
Manage Student Age Groups to limit or support access to Microsoft Copilot for students 13+.

Every hour returned from focusing on the data pipeline is an hour returned to learning. That is Cloud with Purpose.

Getting Your Data Back Where It Belongs

Learning does not stop at the edge of Microsoft 365, and neither should your data. seed™ closes the loop by moving grade data, assessment data, and engagement signals back to the platforms that need them, automatically.

Back to your SIS: Keeping your system of record current and authoritative without double grade entry.
To your Analytics platform: Giving administrators and instructional coaches visibility into what is working, event making Microsoft 365 activity visible, without waiting for manual exports.
Building your dream data estate: What if you could combine your academic and instructional data, your operations and staff data, and your financial data into a single place? What if you could have it prepped and ready so you can ask questions with Copilot and / or AI Agents.
- Which schools have the most students off track right now? Top 5, and why.
- Where are we spending the most with the weakest results? Top 3.

One connected data ecosystem. Compounding the return on every platform investment your district has made and accelerating the flow of learning throughout.

UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition: Giving Leaders the Visibility They Deserve

District technology leaders make consequential decisions about licensing, training, and support every year. They deserve data that makes those decisions clear. Authentica UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition was built to provide exactly that: a straightforward, actionable picture of how your Microsoft 365 environment is being used across the organization.

Not a consultant engagement. Not a manual pull from the admin portal. A purpose-built, single view of your tenant that tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it.

App-by-app usage across your tenant: Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, OneNote, and more, in one place.
School-by-school and role-based breakdowns: See where adoption is strong and where targeted support would unlock real value.
License utilization insights: Ensure every seat is earning its value and renewal conversations are grounded in actual usage data.
Back to School readiness views: Identify accounts and configurations that need attention before day one, not after.

When technology leaders can see clearly, they lead confidently. That visibility is not a luxury. It is what great tools are supposed to deliver.

Managed Services for Microsoft 365: A Team That Has Been Here Before

At Authentica, we deliver Managed Services with a servant leadership mindset. We're not just a helpdesk, our team has years of experience at Microsoft, having built education solutions like SDS, Teams for Education, and Graph APIs. We support your district as an expert extension to handle critical Microsoft 365 tasks efficiently, allowing your technology staff to focus on their key responsibilities.

What Managed Services for Microsoft 365 Covers

End-of-Year close support for SDS expiration management, tenant cleanup, graduating account archiving, and identity hygiene, handled on time and on spec so your team can close the year cleanly.
Back to School launch for new year SDS configuration, classroom provisioning, device group refresh, and Conditional Access review, so teachers walk into a working environment on day one.
Ongoing SDS health monitoring and proactive troubleshooting, so issues are resolved before they become incidents
Microsoft Entra ID and identity management support across the full user lifecycle.
Teams for Education configuration, governance, and adoption enablement.
Intune for Education device policy and deployment support.
Copilot readiness assessment and enablement, so your district is positioned for AI-powered learning when you are ready to move.

This is what it looks like when your Microsoft 365 environment has a team behind it that is fully committed to your success, not just at launch, but every day.

End of School Checklist: Five Things Worth Doing Before Summer Break

These are the actions that make Back to School smoother, faster, and less reactive. Your team knows this; this is a reminder of what is worth prioritizing before the calendar turns.

Audit Microsoft Entra ID for inactive and graduating accounts. Clean identities now mean a cleaner, more secure tenant heading into the new year, and fewer licensing surprises at renewal.
Review your SDS sync health. Check error and warning logs now. Small data issues that are easy to address in the spring become August emergencies. Get ahead of them while there is room to breathe.
Check your Microsoft 365 license utilization. If you are on A3 or A5, are those features actively working for your district? UsageIQ™ Microsoft 365 Edition can show you the full picture and give you a clear story heading into renewal season.
Archive Teams classes from the current year. Establish your retention and archival approach before the new year roster drop. A clean tenant makes everyone faster, IT, teachers, and students.
Plan your Back-to-School timeline now. Microsoft School Data Sync (SDS) provisioning for a large district takes time. Build in buffer, engage your support resources before August, and set your team up to launch the year confidently instead of reactively.

We Are Here to Serve

Authentica Solutions is offering a complimentary Microsoft 365 Readiness Assessment for districts that want a clear picture of where they stand before the new year begins. This is a straightforward conversation with our team, people who have been inside these systems for years, helping you identify what is working, what is ready to unlock, and where the right tools can return the most value.

No pressure. Just expertise, in service of your district and the learning that happens inside it.

Let’s talk to schedule your complimentary Microsoft 365 Readiness Assessment.

About Authentica Solutions

Authentica Solutions is an EdTech company grounded in servant leadership and built around one purpose: accelerating the flow of learning. Our team, including former Microsoft engineers who built core Microsoft 365 education products, serves K-12 districts through seed™, UsageIQ™, reachAI™, and Managed Services for Microsoft 365. Cloud with Purpose. Visit www.authenticasolutions.com

Hands-on Session: From idea to interactive lesson with Microsoft Learning Zone

MikeTholfsen — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:53:02 GMT

Join us on Tuesday, May 12th at 8:00 AM Pacific for a hands-on professional development session introducing Learning Zone - a new app that helps you create interactive, classroom-ready lessons in minutes. In this 45-minute webinar, the Product Management team will guide you through core capabilities and the latest updates. You can follow along using your own Microsoft 365 Education account. Also, you will be able to get Professional Development credit with this session and we will offer a Credly badge at the end.

What we will cover:

✅ Getting started with Learning Zone: Access Learning Zone and get set up

✅ Experience as a student: Join a session and see how it works from the student perspective

✅ Building your first interactive lesson: Create your first interactive lesson (in minutes!)

✅ Assigning to your class: Send lessons via link, short code, Teams Assignments, or your LMS

✅ Exploring the ready-to-learn library: Bring immediate value to your students through a variety of lessons by trusted of partners.

Important note: Lesson generation is currently available only on Copilot+ PCs with any Microsoft 365 Education license (supported in English and Spanish). No Copilot+ PC? No problem. You’ll still get to try out the student experience, learn how to use the lesson library, assign interactive lessons, review insights, and integrate Learning Zone into your existing workflows.

📅 Date: Tuesday, May 12th
⏰ Time: 8:00 AM Pacific

Register: https://aka.ms/LZwebinarMay26

We look forward to having you attend the event!

Minecraft Education Lesson Plans in Teach: AI-powered lesson planning meets the world of Minecraft

MaxFritz — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:57:37 GMT

As educators, you've told us that some of your most time-consuming work is adapting lessons for engagement, aligning them to standards, and finding ways to bring immersive experiences into your curriculum. At the same time, Minecraft Education is already one of the most effective learning tools for engaging learners in classrooms around the world, with students lighting up the moment they hear the word "Minecraft."

Today, we're bringing those two things together. Minecraft Education lesson plans are now generally available in Teach.

Describe your topic, pick a grade level and subject, and Teach generates a complete, standards-aligned lesson plan built around Minecraft Education activities, including the specific blocks, materials, and preparation steps you need to run it confidently, even if you've never opened Minecraft Education before. (Minecraft Education is included in most Microsoft 365 software subscriptions for schools, so you also likely have full access.)

What you get

Every generated Minecraft Education lesson plan includes:

Standards-aligned Minecraft Education activities - Build activities and challenges that reflect your selected standards across subjects like ELA, math, science, social studies, computer science, and more
Minecraft-specific materials guidance - Recommendations for the exact blocks, items, and in-game tools your students will need, so you don't have to figure it out yourself
Preparation instructions - Step-by-step setup guidance for educators new to Minecraft Education, so you can walk into the classroom ready to go
Differentiation and collaboration - Tiered challenge options, collaborative build tasks, and formative checks embedded within gameplay
A student link - A shareable link to send directly to students so they can join the activity

See it in action

Once your lesson is generated, you can edit any section directly or use Enhance with AI to refine it further: add collaborative build tasks, adjust the length and tone, include accessibility supports, or regenerate with new instructions. When it's ready, save to OneDrive and open it in Word to share with colleagues, or launch the Minecraft Education app directly to set up the lesson experience.

For a full walkthrough of every step, see the support article.

Why this matters

We know many of you already love using Minecraft Education in your classrooms, while others are curious how Minecraft can enhance your teaching to deepen student learning and engagement. Minecraft Education lesson plans in Teach make it easier to create experiences by generating a complete, customized lesson from your topic and standards, with the Minecraft-specific materials, activities, and preparation guidance built in.

Whether you're looking for a fresh lesson idea in a subject you haven't tried with Minecraft Education before, or you want to quickly adapt a concept for a different grade level, this tool gives you a starting point you can make your own. You bring the teaching expertise and your knowledge of your students.

Get started

Try it now: Minecraft Education lesson plan
Available to Faculty/Staff with a Microsoft 365 for Education license and Copilot Chat enabled
Does not require a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license
Minecraft Education may already be included with your Microsoft 365 license or can be purchased separately. Check your licensing options.

Helpful Links

Teach module training on Microsoft Learn, now including training on Minecraft Education lesson generation
Training courses for Minecraft educators

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below - We'd love to hear how you plan to use Minecraft Education lesson plans in your classroom!

Share your feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program (aka.ms/joinEIP).

Until next time,

Max Fritz · Microsoft Education

Classic LTI App Retirements, Preview of OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas

tjvering — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:30:00 GMT

Classic Microsoft LTI® Apps Retiring in 2026: What You Need to Know and How to Prepare

Microsoft is continuing its investment in a unified, modern Microsoft 365 LTI experience. As part of this evolution, several classic Microsoft LTI apps will be retired in September 2026.

This post outlines:

Which classic LTI apps are retiring and when
What happens to existing course links and content created in classic LTIs retiring
What actions you should take now to prepare, and start transitioning to Microsoft 365 LTI
New migration tooling available to support transition

Classic Microsoft LTI® Apps Retiring September 17, 2026

As we shared last September in our Microsoft 365 LTI GA release Blog, the following classic Microsoft LTI apps will be retired on September 17, 2026:

Microsoft OneDrive LTI (1.3)
OneNote Class Notebook LTI (1.1)
Microsoft Reflect LTI (1.3)
Microsoft Teams Assignments LTI (1.3)

After September 17, 2026, any links or placements of these classic apps in courses will stop working. However, the files, notebooks, assignments, and check-ins created by these classic apps will continue to be available to copy and reuse.

Replacements for these classic experiences are now available through the unified Microsoft 365 LTI built on the LTI® 1.3 Advantage standard. This delivers modern security, simplified identity mapping with Microsoft Entra, LMS enrollment and grade syncing, and a single deployment model for LMS administrators. We’ll continue to update our migration guides as additional tools and guidance become available.

NEW: Preview the OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas

Canvas LMS Customers: We are excited to announce that the Microsoft OneDrive LTI Migration Tool for Canvas is now available in Preview!
This tool helps institutions using Canvas LMS migrate OneDrive content links from the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI app to the new Microsoft 365 LTI app — preserving existing file links in courses so educators and students experience a seamless transition.

For new preview deployments: detailed deployment instructions are available in the Canvas migration guide, which has been updated with configuration steps and guidance for using the migration tool.

If you participated in the private preview: If you have already deployed the OneDrive LTI Migration Tool in Canvas during the private preview, no action is required. Your existing deployment will continue to work as part of the Public Preview, and in GA. If you deployed the private preview in a testing environment, we suggest that you follow the new Canvas migration guide in your production environment.

Below is guidance to assist with transition from the other classic LTI apps and on additional LMS platforms. We will continue to communicate updates to this guidance as it evolves.

If you use the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI 1.3 with an LMS other than Canvas

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the OneDrive app enabled and guide educators to use the new Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education menus) to create file links or embeds in course content.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI app in your LMS but do not uninstall or disable the app.
Files linked or embedded with the classic Microsoft OneDrive LTI will stop working when the app is retired, so those links and embeds must be replaced using the new Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education) app ahead of the retirement date.

OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.1 (All LMS platforms)

The new OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.3 integration is now available in the Microsoft 365 LTI app, with automatic roster sync and streamlined setup.

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the OneNote Class Notebook app enabled, and guide educators to use the new app.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the classic OneNote integration, but do not uninstall the app to avoid migration issues during transition.
While there is no direct migration path from OneNote Class Notebook LTI 1.1 notebooks to Microsoft 365 LTI Class Notebooks, educators can copy sections/pages from one notebook to another using the right-click menu on Sections and Pages (and selecting “Move/Copy”) in OneNote on Windows, OneNote Web, and OneNote for Mac. Instructions are also available for content transfer using OneNote on Mac, iOS, or Android.

Microsoft Teams Assignments LTI 1.3 (All LMS platforms)

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the Assignments app enabled, and guide educators to create assignments using the new app.
Disable/hide/remove placements of the legacy Teams Assignments LTI app as soon as you install the new Microsoft 365 LTI and enable the Assignments app, and guide you users to copy their existing assignments using the new app.
Teams Assignments created by the classic LTI 1.3 app can be reused as in the new Microsoft 365 LTI Assignments experience (which does not require a Team)
Assignments created in the LMS or via the Assignments app in Microsoft Teams can be copied and reused using the Create from Existing functionality in the Microsoft 365 LTI (Microsoft Education) Assignment instructor flow.

Microsoft Reflect LTI 1.3 (All LMS platforms)

Deploy Microsoft 365 LTI with the Reflect app enabled, and guide educators to create new Reflects in the new Microsoft 365 LTI experience.
There is no migration path for reflects created in the classic Reflect LTI 1.3 app to the Reflect experience in the new Microsoft 365 LTI Reflect app.
We recommend transitioning to the new Reflect experience in Microsoft 365 LTI as soon as possible, and remove the classic app ahead of the September 17, 2026 retirement.

Stay Connected

We love hearing from you! There are a few ways to stay engaged with Microsoft and your peers on the LMS integrations.

Follow this blog! Click Register at the top right to create an account and profile for the Microsoft Tech Community and Follow the Education Blog so you don’t miss any of our updates.

Join the free Education Insiders Program to preview updates, get support from other community members, meet the team, and influence the roadmap.
Join us for Microsoft 365 LTI office hours to connect with your peers and share feedback directly with Microsoft experts.

When: 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month @ 11AM EST
Where: https://aka.ms/LTIOfficeHours

Getting help and giving feedback

LMS and Microsoft 365 admins can contact Microsoft Education Support to help resolve configuration and deployment issues, for themselves or on behalf of users.
Educators and Learners can contact support or give feedback directly from the app through the help and feedback menu.

TJ Vering
Principal Product Manager
Microsoft Education
https://linkedin.com/in/tvering

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (https://1edtech.org/)

New information literacy features in Search Progress now generally available

EmmaGray — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:07:19 GMT

Hello all!

Last September, we shared a preview of new information literacy features coming to Search Progress — designed to help students pause, think critically, and show their reasoning as they research online. Today, we’re excited to share that these features are generally available for all educators using Search Progress through Assignments in Teams for Education and the Microsoft 365 LTI®.

A special thank you to the educators who participated in the preview and shared feedback along the way; your insights helped shape these features into what they are today.

See it in action

Want a walkthrough before reading the details? Watch our Elevate Signature Series session, “Show Me Your Thinking,” where Dr. Geri Gillespy and I discuss future ready skills along with Search Progress setup, the full educator-to-student workflow, and how these skills connect to global assessment frameworks like PISA 2029.

Why process matters more than ever

Information literacy skills like verifying sources, understanding context, and thinking critically are foundational for responsible and effective navigation of online information. These skills become even more critical as AI becomes an integral part of learning and daily life, where students don’t just need access to information, they need to know how to evaluate it.

To ensure these features were developed in alignment with the latest in online reasoning research, we consulted with experts from the Digital Inquiry Group — a team with decades of experience as curriculum designers, classroom educators, researchers, and teacher educators — recognized with awards from UNESCO, the American Educational Research Association, and the School Library Association, to name a few.

What’s now available

The enhanced Search Progress features introduce structured activities and checkpoints — cognitive forcing functions that encourage students to pause, consider, and articulate their reasoning as they navigate the complex world of online information. Here’s what you can now enable for your assignments:

Evaluating source reputability: Instead of relying solely on what a source says about itself, students investigate the individuals or organizations behind the information by looking into what other sources say about them, like how employers use references in a job interview.
Cross-checking and lateral reading: “Using the internet to check the internet”, students compare information and perspectives across multiple sources to reveal patterns, differences, and possible inaccuracies.
Impact awareness: Students consider what could be at risk if the information is inaccurate or fabricated with the new "factual importance" checkpoint. For instance, health advice carries different consequences than an AI-generated image of a cat dancing at the disco.
Identifying source purpose: Information is created for a reason. Students consider who created a source, and whether it’s trying to inform, persuade, sell, or entertain.
Metacognitive reflection: Students reflect on the research process itself including why certain sources stood out, which strategies worked best, and how to apply those learnings in the future.

Not just for research projects

These features aren’t only for formal research assignments. They’re designed for class activities that involve online research, whether students are exploring a new topic, gathering sources for a presentation, or verifying information for a discussion. The goal is to build habits that transfer throughout the digital information ecosystem, from navigating social media to evaluating AI-generated content. For example:

A science educator assigns a pre-lab research task on chemical reactions. By enabling Source Reputation and Factual Importance, students learn to prioritize safety data sheets and academic sources over unverified blogs and to think about why accuracy matters when the stakes are high.
A social studies educator uses Cross-check for an assignment focusing on current events. Students discover that a viral statistic has been reported differently across sources, and they practice tracing claims back to their origin — building lateral reading habits they’ll carry into their media consumption outside of school.

What educators are saying

Teacher librarians, in particular, have told us that the “process over product” approach gives them something they’ve been missing — visibility into the process of student inquiry, not just what they turn in. These features give them a window into the journey, not just the destination. With new scaffolds that support cross-checking and the investigation of source reputation, Search Progress now covers more of the skills they’ve been trying to teach.

We’ve heard from educators that the explanation prompts reveal a side of student thinking that traditional assignments don't often capture. During an early pilot, students pushed back on a text field that didn’t scroll to expand, not because they wanted less writing, but because they had more to say about why they chose their sources and wanted more space to explain their thinking. Students who described themselves as not being strong essay writers found a different way to show their thinking, and when they knew that their reasoning mattered as much as the final product, it changed how they engaged with the assignment.

Preparing students with future-ready skills for the age of AI

As educators worldwide work to build students’ information literacy skills, global frameworks are evolving to match. The OECD recently published a first draft of the PISA 2029 Media and Artificial Intelligence Literacy (MAIL) assessment framework — a new assessment that will measure 15-year-olds’ ability to critically evaluate digital and AI-generated content across all participating countries.

We were interested to see how closely the skills that Search Progress helps build align with the competences this framework describes. The MAIL assessment places significant emphasis on evaluating source credibility, assessing purpose and bias, and cross-checking information across multiple sources — all skills that Search Progress is designed to support through structured activities and checkpoints in the flow of research.

Educators have also shared that these features help address a tension many are navigating right now: how to maintain academic integrity when AI-generated work is increasingly difficult to distinguish from student work. Rather than relying on detection tools at the end of the pipeline, Search Progress makes the research process itself the artifact, which gives educators evidence of student thinking throughout. Of course, information literacy is broader than any single tool. The MAIL framework also includes competences around content creation and collaborative digital participation that go beyond what Search Progress currently addresses. But for the core skill of analysing and evaluating online information — which the framework highlights as one of its most heavily weighted competences — Search Progress can help you give your students meaningful practice right now.

By integrating these research habits into everyday assignments, you’re helping students build skills that will serve them well beyond any single assessment — from navigating social media to evaluating AI-generated content in their daily lives.

Getting started

Open Assignments in Teams for Education (or your LMS via the Microsoft 365 LTI).
Create a new assignment and select Search Progress as a Learning Accelerator.
Choose which information literacy features to enable for this assignment; you can mix and match based on the lesson.
Customize the checkpoint card prompts to fit your subject area and grade level.
Assign it to your class and watch the research process unfold.

Requirements

Available to all Microsoft 365 Education customers
Classes set up in Teams for Education or the Microsoft 365 LTI

Helpful links

📘 Take the MS Learn course — Intro course for educators
📘 Microsoft 365 LTI app overview — Bring Search Progress into your LMS
💬 Join the Education Insiders Program — Share feedback directly with our product team

We’re committed to helping you foster information and AI literacy, and your feedback continues to shape how these tools evolve. Join the Search Progress channel in the Education Insiders Program to connect with other educators, attend community calls, and share your experience directly with the product team. If you’re not yet an EIP member, sign up here: aka.ms/JoinEIP.

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below. I’d love to hear how you’re using these features in your classroom!

Until next time,

Emma Gray
Product Manager II
Microsoft Education

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)

More standards are coming to the Teach Module and Teams for Education!

SamanthaFisher — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:34:58 GMT

Hi everyone!

As educators, you have told us that aligning lessons, assessments, and classroom materials to the standards you actually use is one of the most important parts of making AI-powered teaching tools useful in practice. When standards are available and easy to apply, it becomes much faster to create materials that fit your local curriculum and instructional goals.

That is why we are continuing to expand the standards experience across Microsoft Education. We are excited to share a new wave of international standards coming to the standards experience in Teach and in Teams for Education. These standards will support experiences in the Teach module across Lesson Plans, Quizzes, and Rubrics, and they are also coming to Assignments in Teams for Education. If you don't see your country listed, you can request more standards at this link.

In this post, we will share what is coming this week, what is planned over the next two months, what we are targeting for summer, and how we plan to keep you updated going forward.

Why this matters

Standards alignment helps you spend less time translating curriculum requirements into classroom materials and more time supporting student learning. Whether you are building a lesson plan, generating a quiz, creating a rubric, or preparing future assignments workflows in Teams for Education, access to the right standards makes those experiences more relevant and easier to use.

Our goal is to keep expanding coverage so more educators can work with the standards they already know and trust, in more countries, subjects, and grade bands.

New standards added in 2025

In 2025, we expanded standards coverage with a new set of international additions, including:

Austria
Canada - Ontario
- Early Language Learners
- Health & PE
- Technology Education
- Art
Canada - Quebec Francophone
Canada - Ontario World Languages
- French as a Second Language
- Native Languages
- American Sign Language as a Second Language
- Classical Studies and International Languages
Egypt
England
- Arts Education
- Health & PE
- World Languages
- Technology Education
- Career Technical Education
Finland
Kuwait
UK GCE AS and A Level Qualifications across a broad range of subject areas

These additions helped expand standards coverage beyond core national frameworks and into more subject-specific and qualification-based experiences.

Recently added

We have already started rolling out new international standards this spring. Recent additions include:

Czech Republic
UK additions, including recent support for Scotland, Wales, and UK GCE AS and A Level qualifications
New Brunswick - Technology Standards
Kuwait - Language Arts, Math, Social Studies
Estonia - Language Arts, Math, Science
Estonia - Social Studies
Latvia
New Brunswick - Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies

These recent additions laid the groundwork for the next wave of standards now arriving across Teach and Teams for Education.

Coming this week

This week, we are adding the following standards to the standards experience in Teach and Teams for Education:

Finland
Lithuania
Norway
Romania

These additions continue our recent rollout of international standards and expand access for educators who want to align AI-assisted lesson creation and assessment workflows to local curriculum expectations.

Coming in the next two months

Over the next two months, we expect to continue expanding standards coverage with the following additions:

Slovakia
Sweden
Egypt
Canada - Quebec Francophone Standards
India NCERT - Hindi Language Arts
India NCERT - Sanskrit Language Arts
Bahrain
Lebanon
Oman
Qatar
Greece

We also have additional standards in progress that are on the roadmap, with timing still being finalized:

Austria
Kuwait - Science
India NCERT - Urdu Language Arts
Australia ACARA National
- Technology Education
- Health & PE
- Art
- Languages
Canada - New Brunswick additional subject expansion
- Health & PE
- Art
- Languages
Norway vocational standards

As these become available, they will light up the same standards-backed experiences across Teach and Teams for Education.

Planned for summer

Looking ahead, we are planning an even broader set of standards expansions over the summer. This work is designed to add more international coverage across core subjects and additional curriculum frameworks.

The following are planned for summer:

Belgium - Flemish Catholic Network Standards (VVKSO)
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Canada, British Columbia
- ADST (Entrepreneurship & Marketing)
- Career Education (Career-Life Education, Career-Life Connections)
- Core Competencies
Canada: Ontario
- Business Studies
- Canadian & World Studies
- Co-op Ed
- Guidance & Career Ed
- Ontario Catholic expectations (ICE)
CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)
- Language Arts
Portugal
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Germany: NRW State Kernlehrplan
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Hong Kong
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Turkey
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Vietnam
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Costa Rica
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Peru
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Guatemala
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Morocco
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Croatia
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Kenya
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Bolivia
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Chile
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Pakistan
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
Panama
- Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies

This planned summer wave reflects our continued focus on expanding standards coverage in ways that are useful for real classroom workflows across regions.

Where you will see these standards

As standards coverage expands, educators will see the impact across several experiences:

Teach module - Lesson Plans
Teach module - Quizzes
Teach module and Teams for Education – Rubrics
Teams for Education – Assignments Instructions (Coming soon)

This means more opportunities to use standards as part of lesson creation, assessment design, and classroom workflows without having to start from scratch.

What this means for educators

As more standards become available, you will be able to:

Align lesson materials to more local and regional curriculum requirements
Build quizzes and rubrics that better reflect what students are expected to know and do
Use standards-backed workflows in Teach across more countries and subject areas
Prepare for future standards-aligned experiences in Assignments in Teams for Education

For educators working across multiple countries, languages, or curriculum systems, this expanded coverage can help reduce manual work and make AI-generated outputs more relevant to your teaching context.

We plan to keep sharing updates

We also plan to share regular blog updates roughly every quarter so you can see what standards are newly available, what is rolling out next, and where we are continuing to expand coverage.

Our goal is to make these updates easier to track so educators, school leaders, and partners can stay current on what is available in the standards experience across Microsoft Education.

Helpful links

Getting started with Teach
Modify content - Align to Standards
Microsoft Teams for Education
International standards currently available through EdGate
Request additional standards
Share feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program

Have questions or want to let us know which standards you would like to see next? Drop a comment below or submit a request through our Standards Feedback form. We would love to hear what curriculum frameworks matter most in your classrooms.

Until next time,

Samantha Fisher · Microsoft Education

What's New in Microsoft EDU - March 2026

MikeTholfsen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:23:44 GMT

Join us on Wednesday, March 25th, 2026 for our latest "What's New in Microsoft EDU" webinar! We will be covering all of the latest product updates from Microsoft Education. These 30-minute webinars are put on by the Microsoft Education Product Management group and happen once per month, this month both 8:00am Pacific Time and 4:00pm Pacific time to cover as many global time zones as possible around the world. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel in the new “What’s New in Microsoft EDU” playlist, so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others!

Here is our March 2026 webinar agenda:
1) M365 Copilot and AI updates for Educators and Students
- Modify Existing Content
- Minecraft EDU Lesson Plans
- New Learning Activities: Fill in the Blanks, Matching and Self-Quizzing
- Study & Learn agent for studnets
2) Learning Zone General Availability and the Copilot+ PC
3) Microsoft 365 LTI and Teach Module for Learning Management Systems
4) AMA - Ask Microsoft EDU Anything (Q&A)

We look forward to having you attend the event!

How to sign up
📅 OPTION 1: March 25th, Wednesday @ 8:00am Pacific Time Register here
📅 OPTION 2: March 25th, Wednesday @ 4:00pm Pacific Time Register here

This is what the webinar portal will look like when you register:

We look forward to seeing you there!

Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education

Learning Zone spotlight: How women won the vote

NevoGat — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:03:16 GMT

A monthly spotlight from the Learning Zone collection, featuring ready-to-use lessons that bring timely historical context and structured classroom discussion into your teaching.

Women’s History Month: How voting rights were won

The right to vote was not inevitable. It was organized, argued for, resisted, and won through decades of persistence. In both the UK and USA, activists formed movements, debated tactics, delivered speeches, wrote declarations, and in many cases faced arrest and imprisonment.

Women’s History Month invites us to look back at the women who pushed boundaries and helped change the course of history. It is a fitting moment to explore one of the most significant political shifts of the modern era in the classroom.

How women won the vote in Microsoft Learning Zone provides a structured, interactive way to explore this history in class. Students examine the contrasting approaches to the fight, analyze key figures, and compare British and American campaigns over time.

Assign this lesson in Learning Zone and bring context and awareness into your classroom this March.

This lesson is part of a curated library of ready-to-use interactive lessons in Microsoft Learning Zone, a free Windows app that allows educators to easily create and deliver interactive classroom experiences.

Modify Content in Teach: AI-powered tools to adapt your lessons in minutes

Leif Brenne — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:40:40 GMT

Already have great lesson materials? Now you can instantly align them to standards, differentiate for every learner, adjust reading levels, and add real-world examples — all without starting from scratch.

Hi everyone! As educators, you have told us that some of your most time-consuming work is not creating lessons — it is adapting them. Adjusting a reading passage for different grade levels, aligning an existing activity to new curriculum standards, or adding scaffolds for diverse learners can eat up hours of prep time each week.

That is why we are excited to announce that Modify Content is now generally available in Copilot in Teach — a set of AI-powered tools that help you take content you already have and quickly tailor it for your classroom.

What is Modify Content?

Modify Content lets you transform existing lesson materials — instructions, reading passages, lesson plans — using AI, so every student gets what they need without you having to rewrite everything manually. Just paste your content (or upload a Word or PDF file), choose how you want to modify it, and review the result.

It is designed to keep you in the driver's seat. Every modification is generated as a suggestion that you review and approve before it becomes part of your lesson.

Four powerful ways to modify your content

Align to Standards

Have a lesson you love but need it to meet specific curriculum requirements? Select one or more educational standards, and the tool adjusts your content to reflect what students should know and be able to do — without losing the original context of your lesson.

Example: A middle school science teacher has a hands-on weather observation activity. She selects the relevant Next Generation Science Standard and the tool weaves in the learning expectations, so her lesson now clearly supports the required competencies.

Differentiate Instructions

Adapt your instructions for different grade levels and add scaffolding — like step-by-step breakdowns, example answers, or hints — so every student can access and engage with the task.

Example: A high school English teacher adapts a literary analysis prompt for students reading below grade level. She selects a lower grade target, adds "Hints" as the scaffold type, and chooses "Expanded" length. In seconds, she has a version that guides struggling readers through the same assignment.

Modify Reading Level

Rewrite any text to match a specific grade level while preserving the original meaning and key vocabulary. You can also generate a glossary — with clear, age-appropriate definitions — right at the end of the passage.

Example: A secondary social studies educator wants learners to work with a primary source written at a university reading level. Using Modify Reading Level, she produces a version that keeps the document's key ideas and important historical terms intact while simplifying sentence structure for her students.

Add Supporting Examples

Enrich your content with real-world, historical, or scientific examples that make abstract concepts more concrete and relatable — without altering your original text.

Example: An elementary teacher is introducing the concept of ecosystems. She adds two "Real World" examples at "Moderate" depth, and the tool appends relatable scenarios — like a local pond ecosystem and a school garden — that help students connect the concept to their own experiences.

See it in action

Here is a quick look at how Modify Content works:

Open Teach and select Modify Content
Paste your content or upload a Word/PDF file
Choose your modification — Align to Standards, Differentiate Instructions, Modify Reading Level, or Add Supporting Examples
Configure your options — grade level, scaffold type, number of examples, and more
Generate and review — the AI produces a modified version for you to approve, edit, or regenerate
Save your result — download as a Word document or copy the text directly

Tip: You can iteratively refine the output using the description box to request adjustments — like changing sentence length, clarifying a concept, or modifying specific sections.

Tips for getting the most out of Modify Content

Tip	Details
Start with clear, detailed input	The more context you provide, the more relevant the output. A well-written paragraph gives the AI much more to work with than a few bullet points.
Always review before saving	AI-generated content is a starting point, not the final word. Check that the output matches your instructional goals and is appropriate for your students.
Combine modifications	Use Align to Standards first, then Differentiate Instructions on the result. Layering modifications can help you build exactly the version you need.
Preserve key vocabulary	When modifying reading levels, use the key terms feature to ensure important subject-specific words stay in the text, even if the overall reading level changes.

Requirements

To use Modify Content:

License: Microsoft 365 Education (A1, A3, or A5)
Role: Educator (the feature is not available to students)
Input: Minimum 50 characters of content to generate modifications

Helpful links

Getting started with Teach
Modify content — Align to Standards
Modify content — Differentiate Instructions
Modify content — Modify Reading Level
Modify content — Add Supporting Examples
Share feedback with us by joining our EDU Insider Program

Have questions or ideas? Drop them in the comments below — we would love to hear how you are using Modify Content to save time and support your students!

Until next time,

Leif Brenne · Microsoft Education