Fueling the AI economy with digital skills
Jeana Jorgensen: Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Learning Ryan Currie: Principal PM Manager, Microsoft Learn In today's rapidly evolving AI landscape, digital skills development for every individual and organization is crucial to their growth and overall success. As Satya Nadella highlighted in his Microsoft Ignite keynote today, Microsoft's mission has always been about creating technology that empowers others to innovate and solve real-world problems. This age of AI is no different. We must equip everyone with the skills to participate and thrive in the AI economy. Our commitment to skilling is not just about technology adoption, it's about people development. It's about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to succeed in a world where using AI will be commonplace and a natural extension of everything we do. Over the past year, Microsoft has trained and certified over 23 million people in more than 200 countries in digital skills. We are inspired by the profound impact our skilling initiatives have on individuals' lives. From helping underserved communities gain access to new opportunities to empowering professionals to advance their careers and drive organizational transformation, each of the stories fuels our purpose and company mission. We continue investing in our global skilling initiatives to help people and organizations gain the skills needed to deliver their best work by building confidence in their AI fluency. This is how we help ensure that AI fuels job creation, workplace impact, and greater economic opportunity for everyone. Building skills across the AI ecosystem Our approach to skilling is expansive, encompassing a wide range of audiences—from government officials, nonprofits, and citizens, to customers, partners, technology professionals, and students. Each of these groups plays a critical role in the AI ecosystem, and we’re committed to providing them with the resources and support they need to succeed. Governments, nonprofits, and citizens: Through Microsoft Philanthropies skills programs, we collaborate with governments and nonprofits around the world to deliver community-focused digital skills training. Through these partnerships, our goal is to build a global ecosystem that supports sustainable, long-term skilling efforts, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to thrive in an AI-driven world. Organizations and technology professionals. Investing in a skilled workforce can be a game-changer, ensuring that individuals and teams are able to maximize their personal potential while delivering business results. Our skill-building initiatives across Microsoft Learn empower our customers, partners, and technology professionals to harness AI and advanced technologies for innovation and business growth. Through resources like the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative, Microsoft Learn for Organizations, and a worldwide network of Training Services Partners, we help organizations build the necessary workplace skills to drive their business outcomes through an array of learning resources covering topics like AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. Business users: We recognize that AI is transforming all roles within an organization, not just those in technical fields. Business users in varying roles are wondering how AI can effectively help them in their everyday work. With training events like Copilot for Microsoft 365 sessions and other targeted skilling resources, we support their individual learning paths to foster innovation, efficiency, and strategic decision making. Future workforce: We’re deeply committed to equipping the next generation of learners and technologists with cutting-edge educational programs and resources. By partnering with academic institutions and offering initiatives such as Microsoft Learn for Educators and Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors, we empower educators and students to learn, innovate, and make significant impact in their communities. Our goal is to inspire young minds—from K-12 to early-in-career professionals—to thrive in the future workforce and make significant impact in their communities. New skilling resources announced at Ignite As we continue to prioritize skilling across various sectors, we’re also focused on enhancing the tools and platforms that deliver these learning experiences. Our commitment to innovation extends beyond traditional training methods to incorporate cutting-edge technologies that make learning more accessible and engaging. In this spirit, we’re excited to introduce new capabilities, content, and credentials that leverage AI to further enhance learning. New capabilities on Microsoft Learn leveraging the power of AI We’re excited to share two new capabilities on Microsoft Learn that introduce the power of AI into the flow of learning: personalized Plans and Ask Learn, our AI assistant. These capabilities are currently available in the United States in English and will expand to additional languages and geographies over the next few months. Personalized Plans A Plan on Microsoft Learn is a set of curated content that includes documentation, code samples, modules, learning paths, and more. Plans feature built-in milestones, sharing capabilities, optional automated reminders and reporting to help individuals achieve their learning objectives. Microsoft Learn now leverages AI to enable learners to create Plans that are personalized just for them. Learners can provide individual inputs about their career, learning goals, preferences, and timeline. With this input, Microsoft Learn utilizes AI to find the best training content available and generates a personalized learning Plan. Visit Plans on Microsoft Learn to get started. Ask Learn We’re excited to provide a new resource for learners that helps answer questions as they learn new topics. Ask Learn, our new AI assistant on Microsoft Learn, enables users to ask questions about the material contained in training modules and get real-time guidance. This capability is now available for Microsoft Azure training content and will be expanding to additional product areas in the coming months. To try this capability, sign in at aka.ms/AskLearn from within the United States and navigate to any Azure module. Then, click ‘Ask Learn’ and enter your question or prompt in the chat to get help. With these new AI capabilities, we’re paving the pathway to our vision of bringing the power of AI into the flow of learning—from identifying what to learn next, to gaining new skills in an efficient and personalized way so that learners are confident and ready to tackle their next project, credential, and career opportunity. Demonstrating technical proficiency with Applied Skills credentials We continue to grow our credentials portfolio with new Microsoft Applied Skills. Applied Skills are verifiable credentials that demonstrate competency in defined skillsets aligned with AI and cloud projects that people need to perform in their everyday jobs. We offer a streamlined experience, so learners earn these credentials at their own pace through free, interactive, lab-based assessments on Microsoft Learn. Our new Applied Skills credentials are focused on AI, Copilot—including GitHub Copilot—and Security and cover scenarios like deploying AI enabled tools, protecting and responding against cyberattacks, and accelerating app development. Available now: Prepare security and compliance to support Microsoft 365 Copilot Implement AI models with Microsoft Power Platform AI Builder Defend against cyberthreats with Microsoft Defender XDR Coming soon: Create agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio Accelerate app development by using GitHub Copilot Review all the available Applied Skills credentials. Join us for the Microsoft Learn Challenge | Ignite Edition Building on the technologies showcased at Microsoft Ignite, the Microsoft Learn Challenge | Ignite Edition offers learners a valuable opportunity to develop in-demand skills. The Challenge features eight topics including Azure AI, Copilot, Fabric, and Security. With interactive community events, training offers, and sessions led by experts, learners will develop skills that will set them apart. The Microsoft Learn Challenge is open until January 10, 2025. Register now! We’re in this together AI is reshaping the skills individuals, organizations, and governments need to thrive in this next technology era. We believe investing in people through AI skilling is the key to unlocking their full potential. That’s why we’re so excited about the continuous evolution of our learning initiatives and experiences. And this is just the beginning. We’re excited to do this with you.
