More Copilot AI features are being added to Microsoft 365 Education customers

It may be the middle of the summer holiday season for students and teachers, but it won't be long before classes begin again for the 2024-2025 school year. Today, Microsoft announced it will be adding a number of new features for users of its Microsoft 365 Education services.

In a blog post, Microsoft revealed that a couple of these features will also include the use of its Copilot generative AI assistant. One of them will access Copilot to assist educators in creating content for things like assignments, lesson plans, lecture slides, and more. Educators will be able to use Copilot across many Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, Word, Outlook, and OneNote. Microsoft plans to add this kind of function sometime in early 2025.

Another feature that will be released much earlier will allow educators to use Copilot to create school quizzes in Microsoft Forms. The blog post stated:

Educators can tell Copilot what they want to test, such as specific topics covered in class, and Copilot will create a well-crafted quiz draft with correct answers. Educators can then review the questions, remove any they don't want, add new ones, and finally keep the draft for use. Copilot also provides step-by-step solutions for each question, which educators can check and modify if needed or ask Copilot to regenerate.

This new feature will be added in August.

Later this year, Microsoft will launch a private preview that will allow educators to use, or not use any feedback that students are receiving about their work from AI-based suggestions. It states.

Educators review, edit, or discard suggested student feedback, which is based on individual student progress, rubrics selections, or assignment instructions. Educators can start by selecting initial rubric scores and then add the corresponding draft feedback directly into student Word documents in the form of comments or share overall feedback in a Teams Assignment.

Students will also benefit from new Copilot features in Microsoft 365 Education. That includes a new built-in Learning extension that will help students get guidance on how to learn about specific topics along with tests to see how much they have learned. This will also enter a private preview later in 2024.