According to a Data Quality Campaign survey, 86 percent of educators think using data is an important part of being an effective teacher. 81 percent think their students benefit when instruction is informed by data, but many educators cite three common barriers to using student data–not enough time in the day, too much data to use, or data isn’t accessible in time to affect instruction. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Learning Accelerators provide a solution that includes a holistic view of each student’s strengths and challenges, making it quick and easy to identify areas where they need additional support.
Education Insights in Microsoft Teams is part of the Learning Accelerators suite that uses at-a-glance data views to help educators track their students’ Teams and Microsoft 365 activity, from assignment turn-in to engagement in class conversations. Education Insights is a game-changing tool for educators looking to streamline instruction and individualize student learning. It can empower educators to save time and focus on what matters most: helping their students succeed.
Overview of Education Insights dashboard home page with student data
Visualize data to quickly identify and act on trends
The Education Insights dashboard automates data analysis to save educators time in planning, giving feedback to students, and providing help where needed. It uses spotlighted data points and visualizations to keep educators informed on trends in student activity and growth.
Educators know their students best. The student support spotlight cards in Education Insights highlight students’ most current learning and engagement. These cards provide educators with information about students who need extra support. For example, the cards may show students struggling with a particular assignment or having difficulty keeping up with class activities.
With this information, educators can provide targeted support and help students overcome challenges. Additionally, the spotlight card offers talking points designed to help educators initiate conversations about what a student needs and proactively provide support before they fall behind. Spotlight cards help educators ensure that their support is equitable and tailored to each student’s unique needs.
Education Insights Spotlights highlighting the student support card
Education Insights also provides student engagement and performance data that includes information on attendance, class participation, and assignment completion. These data points can help educators track student progress, improve instruction, and individualize learning. The data is organized and represented in a way that makes it easy to understand and actionable, empowering educators to make quick and effective decisions to help students succeed.
The power of Learning Accelerators
Learning Accelerators help make it easier to identify areas where students need additional support. They are divided into three categories: Foundational Skills, Future-Ready Skills, and Educational Insights. It also connects with other Microsoft Education Learning Accelerators, including Reading Progress, Search Coach, and Reflect, to incorporate real-time student data and is built to ensure that data is protected and used ethically.
Foundational skills focus on reading, math, and well-being and include tools like Reading Progress, Reading Coach, and Reflect, which provides students with the foundational understanding they need to succeed in these areas. This not only helps students to achieve academic success but also sets them up for success in the future.
In Education Insights, educators can quickly see data collected from Reading Progress from a whole class view and drill down into individual students’ progress. The high-level overview includes average words read per minute, average accuracy rate, assignments per student, and even a word cloud of challenging words which educators can quickly turn into a practice activity with just a few clicks.
Education Insights overview of Reading Progress data
Reading Progress analyzes each word at the phoneme level and reports an accuracy rating per phoneme. Phoneme scores are mapped onto a set of phonics rules that are displayed in Education Insights.
Specify phonics rules
From within Education Insights educators can also turn personalized lists of practice words into Reading Progress assignments in one click with the Challenge assignment feature.
Create a challenge assignment
Future-ready skills focus on essential workplace competencies such as effective communication and information literacy using tools like Reading Progress, Search Coach, and Reflect. Students can practice these skills on their own and build their confidence in a safe, comfortable environment with the support of real-time coaching and feedback.
Education Insights provides data from these tools to help inform educators on how their students are progressing using these future-ready skills. For example, Search Coach data includes how many searches the class has tried, which filters they applied, and the most common domain they used. It also creates a word cloud of common search terms. At-a-glance, the educator can visually evaluate the effectiveness of students’ search terms and if necessary, help guide students on how to create better queries for their assignment.
Search Coach word cloud of most common search terms. | Search Coach domain options with explanations to help focus an internet search
Additionally, Search Coach breaks individual student data down even further to show the educator each student’s attempted searches, how often they only opened the top results, or did not open any of the results. Reading Progress drills into assignments and grades, and digital activity reports. This targeted information gives the educator opportunities to personalize student learning while developing the student’s digital literacy skills.
Educational Insights aggregates all this data into one easy-to-read dashboard in Microsoft Teams empowering educators to make instructional decisions quickly and with accuracy. This allows educators to quickly adjust their instruction and individualize learning for each student, resulting in better student academic outcomes.
For school leaders, Education Insights offers advanced data analysis and reporting capabilities. They can view data across their entire organization, identify trends and patterns, create customized reports, and use this data to make informed decisions and more effectively support educators and students.
If you’re an educator looking for ways to effectively use data to inform instruction and individualize student learning, Microsoft’s Education Insights in Microsoft Teams is a valuable tool. With its at-a-glance data views and integration with other Microsoft Education Learning Accelerators, it can help track student progress, identify areas where they need additional support, and improve instruction in a time-efficient manner.
Learn more about how to get started and leverage the data in Education Insights for Teams.
