Tool Spotlight: Microsoft Education

Welcome to a Tool Time spotlight with Northwestern Teaching and Learning Technologies. Today we’re looking at Microsoft Education.

What Is It?

After releasing a number of integrations over the years, Microsoft now offers a one-stop-shop for all of their educational services in Canvas. Microsoft Education is available in every Canvas course, providing instructors with the opportunity to easily communicate and collaborate with students in a secure environment.

Microsoft Education includes three core services: OneDrive, Teams, Meetings, and Class Notebooks. Within the integration, instructors choose which of these services to enable. Students enrolled in the Canvas course will then have access through their Northwestern Microsoft 365 accounts without ever having to leave Canvas.

One Drive offers instructors and students several opportunities for file sharing and collaboration.

• Instructors can share One Drive files through the rich content editor, or in Modules or Assignments.
• Students are able to select files from their Northwestern One Drive accounts for assignment submissions.
• Instructors and students can select or create a new Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file to work on together in Collaborations.

Teams offers a fast and convenient home for class communication. When instructors create a Team in Canvas, all students are automatically added to the Team with the ability to communicate asynchronously. This tool offers several features, including:

• General and topic-specific channels for chat messages.
• Quick and accessible file sharing.
• Integration with other Microsoft features, such as One Drive, Meetings, and Class Notebooks.

Meetings offers a video conferencing alternative to Zoom and includes:

• Audio and video.
• Advance scheduling in Canvas.
• In Meeting access to Teams, including chat and file-sharing.

Class Notebooks offers instructors the opportunity to create personal OneNote-based workspaces for every student. This includes:

• Private, individual workspaces shared between instructor and student. Teachers can review student work.
• A read-only content library where teachers place course material and notes for students.
• A shared collaboration area where teachers and students can work together

What Do Instructors Say About It?

Ryan Platte, Professor of Instruction and Director of the Ancient Greek program, is an avid user of the Class Notebooks feature of Microsoft Education. He shares, "The Class Notebook feature for OneNote, used through the new MS Education hub in Canvas, has become my default mode of instruction in all my Ancient Greek language courses. It allows me to distribute documents, collect and annotate homework, and write on the “board” in a non-Latin alphabet. And everything that I write can be viewed by students after class – the “board” is never erased and can be revisited at any time." He adds that this is especially helpful in cases of student absence or hybrid teaching as part of the Big Ten Course Share program.

How to Get Started?

To add Microsoft Education to your Canvas course, go to Settings at the bottom of the left hand navigation panel of your course, select Navigation in the top bar, locate Microsoft Education in the search field, and click on it. Once you refresh the page, Microsoft Education will appear on the left hand navigation. Click on the tab, sign-in, and start selecting the services you would like to enable for your course.

Tool Time Updates

Keep up with the latest updates to tools supported by Northwestern IT:

• Perusall Book Club: Interested in using Perusall for social annotation and discussion outside of the classroom? Perusall now offers Book Clubs on its platform.
• Updated grading interface in Crowdmark: Crowdmark has updating their grading layout to streamline navigation, simplify feedback, and enhance collaboration.