Microsoft has announced new educational tools called Learning Accelerators. Aside from helping both educators and students with the learning process, Microsoft aims to teach students how to spot misinformation and think critically when it comes to searching for sources.
Illustration picture shows a child doing homework with the Microsoft Teams software in Gent, Monday 20 April 2020. Belgium is in its sixth week of confinement in the ongoing corona virus crisis. The measures announced on March 18th in Belgium to avoid the spread of the Covid-19 will remain active until May 4th. JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
(Photo : JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images) Illustration picture shows a child doing homework with the Microsoft Teams software in Gent, Monday 20 April 2020. Belgium is in its sixth week of confinement in the ongoing corona virus crisis. The measures announced on March 18th in Belgium to avoid the spread of the Covid-19 will remain active until May 4th.
Search Progress in Teams for Education
As an addition to the existing Search Coach, Microsoft will launch Search Progress in Teams for Education as the company promotes healthy online research habits through practice work.
In a released announcement by Microsoft, this will allow teachers to guide their students on learning and tracking progress by creating, reviewing, and analyzing practice assignments supported by actionable insights.
Search Progress will check to see if students are searching responsibly, especially since most teachers can not only require a certain number of sources for an assignment. This feature will notify them if pupils are only clicking the first site in the results or using filters for source quality checking.
This tool is specifically designed to support students to complete their personalized assignments, collect and turn in sources, and presenting their work and explanation behind their approach before submitting for feedback.
Teachers will also have the ability to customize a required number of sources for activities and assignments, by giving access to additional insights over time. This will help them to easily track and review progress and trends.
Opportunities will also be provided for students as they practice communicating their explanations and reasoning. This will be a step for them to further develop critical thinking skills.
Vice Chair and President Brad Smith stated, "I think these Learning Accelerators enable us to be even more impactful in doing what we're striving to do - namely, equip faculty and teachers and reach students with better ways to learn. We do this at a scale, frankly, that few others do in the world."
Search Coach
Search Progress strengthens the existing Search Coach. Engadget reported that Search Coach is a tool for students to encourage them to use Teams to search more precisely and avoid false information.
Aside from limiting the data ranges and file types, Search Coach can also limit searches to certain domains like ".gov", ".edu", and more. This tool can also pass queries through fact-checking websites to know if a certain source provides misinformation.
While Search Progress will be available later this year, Search Coach is already available in Microsoft Teams worldwide and works with over 50 languages.
Microsoft Teams also offers Reading Coach and Reading Progress. XDA-Developers reported that it aims to help students to read with more fluency and accuracy.
The company will also add comprehension questions soon for Reading Progress, in an effort to give teachers convenience in testing the student's understanding of a text when reading.
