Technology advancements are now accelerating faster than our ability to adapt, leaving a huge gap in digital skills. A recent Microsoft study has revealed that 82 percent of UK jobs already require digital skills, and that 69 percent of leaders feel their organisation suffers from a digital skills gap, even though 59 percent of employees believe in the importance of developing their digital skills.

The skills gap is only getting wider. By 2025, there are expected to be three million new tech jobs in the UK, and 60 percent of employers are expecting their reliance on advanced digital skills to grow in the next five years. In effect, organisations hoping to grow and remain competitive in the future need to build a workforce that is equipped to fill these roles and thrive in a digital world of work.

Yet many employees don’t have the skills they need to perform their role currently, let alone in the future.

Demand for digital skills also goes beyond the technology sector. A recent employer survey by the Learning and Work Institute found that the proportion of employers who saw basic digital skills as important for employees was particularly high in certain sectors – including media, marketing, advertising and PR (100 percent), IT and telecoms (99 percent), and finance and accounting (97 percent).

However, even in the industry with the lowest proportion – manufacturing – nearly nine in ten (87 percent) employers said that basic digital skills were important for their workers.

So, what more can businesses and employers do to ensure that we have a steady supply of tech talent joining the sector? And, importantly, how can Microsoft help?

Introducing the Microsoft Connector Community

Whilst many business leaders recognise that their organisation is facing a skills shortage, the challenge often comes in knowing what to do about it.

At Microsoft, we believe that part of the answer to tackling the UK’s digital skills gap is collaboration. Bringing together organisations from across the public and private sector to work collectively and deliver tangible benefits to the prospective careers of young people, while driving growth and innovation across the economy.

The Microsoft Connector Community, part of the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, is designed to bridge the digital skills gap. It nurtures a connected community of businesses and organisations that collectively leverage their brands, reputations and resources to address the need for digital skills in the workforce and connect talented individuals to opportunities.

We believe that taking a collaborative approach ensures a steady and well-equipped technology talent pipeline. This is essential to addressing the skills shortages faced by employers today, as well as mitigating future shortages.

I’d like to share my thoughts on how this could work:

1. Creating a connected talent ecosystem: When employers work together to support, empower and inspire young people, rather than bombarding them with too many competing options, we all benefit. By using the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector to advertise digital vacancies, digital skills bootcamps and opportunities for learning and training, we can create a highly visible and inspiring platform that enables young people to find the opportunities that are right for them. In addition, by pooling vacancies across one platform, with a single access point for roles, we can recycle and share talent. We can also signpost applicants towards other vacancies and employers, even if they have been unsuccessful in applying to a different company.

2. Simplifying the talent pipeline: We can help simplify the technology talent pipeline by reimagining how we advertise digital vacancies and training opportunities. For example, we can reach a larger and more diverse pool of candidates by simplifying the language that we use across our digital vacancies. This might increase engagement with candidates from non-conventional technology and digital backgrounds – allowing us to widen our talent pool and employ people who bring a unique and diverse perspective to the sector.

3. Leveraging expertise and insight: A coalition of like-minded individuals enables us to learn from one another’s expertise and experience, helping us to identify, profile and address the systemic issues that are stifling the UK’s economy. What’s more, the Apprenticeship Connector can also support business leaders and employers to better understand the social impact of the work that they’re doing. With demographic and geographic insight, we can identify and better target under-represented and under-served groups.

Building a Connector Community in Greater Manchester

As part of Microsoft’s UK Get On commitment, we’re committed to helping 30,000 people find jobs in the technology sector in Greater Manchester.

I recently had the pleasure of joining colleagues in the region for an event focused on building a connected talent system, as part of National Apprenticeship Week. After the event, I caught up with Greater Manchester Regional Lead, Marie Hamilton, for her take on how the introduction of Microsoft Connector Community could empower the next stage of the Get On campaign in Greater Manchester, and across the UK. Marie said:

“Greater Manchester is now the fastest growing technology hub in Europe, but to maintain this growth, we need to build a skilled and sustainable digital workforce. Working collectively across sectors and industries, regionally and nationally, allows us to understand and measure the skills gap, as well as enabling us to build a shared plan to tackle it.

Our National Apprenticeship Week event demonstrated huge enthusiasm for using the Connector Community model to further the progress made by Get On – as shown by the attendance from not only our largest private sector customers but also across the public sector, academia, central and local government”.

Marie Hamilton, Greater Manchester Regional Lead

What’s next?

Over the coming months, Microsoft will be holding a series of regional roundtable events to help businesses and organisations understand more about the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, and the Connector Community.

To find out more, please visit the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector platform.

Microsoft Get On

At Microsoft, we believe everyone deserves access to the skills, knowledge and opportunity needed to achieve more. Through our Get On commitment, we’re helping 1.5 million people build tech careers and connecting 300,000 to tech job opportunities.

You can find out more by visiting our Digital Skills Hub, where you’ll find a host of information and resources designed to provide business leaders and employers with insights on how to close the UK’s skills gap, harness new technology and drive innovation.

You can also explore Microsoft Learn, which has an array of certifications, modules and learning pathways designed to help business leaders to upskill employees, as well as supporting individuals to take control of their careers and build vital digital skills.

Find out more

Microsoft Digital Skills Hub

Microsoft Apprenticeship Network

How Microsoft is connecting jobseekers to employers

About the author

I am the UK Apprentice Lead for Microsoft in the HR team. Working with apprenticeships since 2012, I have also worked with SMEs creating, designing, and delivering large corporate apprenticeship programmes. My role at Microsoft is all about creating and developing an apprenticeship strategy that supports our UK business and delivers an exceptional experience for both our apprentices and our business.

The post New connections: how we’re bridging the UK digital skills gap appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Following our simulated hospital event at UCLan in May 2020, I built a selection of chatbots using Power Apps. These were developed with the primary purpose of increasing fidelity within online simulation for our health and social care students. I wanted to explore how to automate and standardise parts of the simulation, to help with quality and control from the facilitator’s perspective.

Creating and developing a chatbot

To create a chatbot, I used Power Apps. I first selected Create under the left hand Chatbots heading, and then worked on developing the language behind the bot.

To get started I’d recommend using Microsoft Whiteboard or some paper to map out the language according to what you want the bot to ask and respond with. Try to draw on the direction of the conversation, and how you want it to start and end. Spend some time exploring existing tutorials found in Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Azure, and LinkedIn Learning.

If you’re not sure where the bot will be deployed just yet, consider starting in Power Apps. This will make it possible to save it and then ‘sideload’ into a Team, or to embed the bot into another web site or resource. Follow the Microsoft Power Apps Community for Q&A and problem solving tips to help you along the way. 

Once created, you can proceed to Publish the chatbot, following any further instructions.

Taking a student-centric approach

It’s also important to consider the different types of chatbot that can be created when looking to develop your own. In our case, this helped shape how the bots would be used and where they would ultimately be deployed. Here are three different types of chatbots and examples of how we have used them at UCLan.

1- Repetitive prompter chatbot

Within one online OSCE for our MSc Occupational Therapy students, there are four tasks. The elements of each task became the most asked question, both across the module and leading up to the OSCE. Students understood the tasks but often couldn’t retain which order they were in, and whether these were live or recorded. I created a ‘repetitive prompter’ style chatbot for the module, and we have had real success embedding and deploying it within the assessment space. This is quite an exciting development for me, as it reinforces the benefits of investing in time in chatbots – particularly due to the potential of them being embedded within other Virtual Learning Environments. You can also lift this type of chatbot and place it within your Microsoft Teams space.

2- Reflective prompter chatbot

Our debrief chatbot for IPE online simulation was a collaboration between my colleague Abhi and I. Abhi came up with the language for the chatbot, and I then programmed and published it in Power Apps, using the demo link as a Website tab in Microsoft Teams. This was for a large-scale simulation, with 300+ people within three Teams environments on the one day. This was the first cross-faculty IPE event which had been run online whilst students were studying from home. Subsequent feedback from students and staff has since provided valuable insight into further development for future events. With growing interest in online simulation, we created a Team purely for staff to collaborate around simulation ideas. This has proved really useful, as the bots are now becoming shareable assets across our wider organisation.

3 – Role-specific chatbot

Development of role-specific chatbots started from reflections about how to part-automate online simulation, and also the possibility of deploying a series of chatbots within an online simulation to work as simulated characters within the Microsoft Teams environment. I created a couple of ‘patient’ chatbots, including ‘George’- who needs the toilet. If you don’t respond appropriately, he (understandably) becomes very angry, upset and intends on placing a complaint. I am currently developing another simulated hospital event for 2021 and intend for this to be an IPE activity.

Here is an example of a nurse chatbot which we deployed into a large-scale IPE simulation for a colleague.

Looking ahead

Having successfully deployed chatbots at a local level, we are now looking at the possibility of wider publishing to the organisations app catalogue in Microsoft Teams. Bots could then be selected by other users, and once deployed, would appear as 1:1 chats.

We have no doubt that 2021 and beyond will highlight an increased appetite in the part-automation of a number of day-to-day tasks undertaken by educators, and this is something we will continue to both explore and evaluate.

Find out more

Chatbots for TEL

Creating chatbots for online simulation

Power Apps

App Studio: Creating chatbots in Microsoft Teams

Power Virtual Agents

Learning Microsoft Power Apps

Read more education blogs 

About the author

Sam Pywell is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at the University of Central Lancashire, and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Sam has recently led development of chatbots in online simulation for health and social care students using Microsoft Teams. She is an MIE Expert, DigiLearn Champion and Key Contributor to the DigiLearn Sector community. You can follow her on Twitter @smileyfacehalo.

The post How to develop a chatbot to support your educators and students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Exeter Cathedral School (ECS) was founded in 1179 as a choir school. Nowadays, the School is a co-educational day and boarding school which prides itself on being a nurturing and purposeful school for some 260 pupils. Earlier this year, after the Prime Minister’s announcement that schools across the country were required to close, the School’s management team met to prepare for remote learning for the first time in the School’s 841-year history. We agreed on a three-phase approach.

• Phase 1: Help pupils, parents and staff navigate the three remaining days of the term.
• Phase 2: Provide immediate and long-term on-site support for key worker families.
• Phase 3: Research, prepare and launch a home learning platform to allow for a longer-term closure.

As a small school, we are mindful of budgets and of the need to be able to develop and manage our remote learning platform in-house. All of our requirements led us to Microsoft and to Microsoft Teams. 16 days later, we launched our first ever virtual learning environment: ECS:Learning@Home.

8 principles to delivering a balanced approach to remote learning

Remote learning was new to us and to our pupils and families. We knew what we asked of them needed to be realistic, doable, worthwhile and stimulating. So, we established eight founding principles that would underpin ECS:Learning@Home.

Meaningful and manageable

We worked hard to set up programmes that allowed uncomplicated access to our curriculum across the age groups. We ensured that our online learning was rich, purposeful and clear.

Enriching

School is about much more than classroom learning. Through our home learning programme we were able to come together as a school for assemblies, form times, quizzes, sports days, guest speakers, Speech Day and more. This allowed us to add the important touches to a child’s day ‘at school’ and to create space for pupils to be recognised for their work and have fun with their peers.

Rigorous, balanced and flexible

We attach great importance to a broad and balanced school experience andwanted to make sure that our ‘real life’ breadth of opportunity and high standards continued to be offered remotely.

Equally, a one-size-fits-all approach was clearly not going to be good enough – each family’s circumstances were different. So we empowered pupils and parents to access our full daily offerings as they saw fit and to build in screen-free time to their routines.

Interaction

Interaction is absolutely fundamental for effective learning and teaching – and of course for first-rate pastoral care. We wanted to use a digital platform that could replicate, as closely as possible, a classroom experience. We were determined to be live, interactive, and reactive to pupils’ needs while online. Teams allowed us to do this and to achieve a coherent model of home learning and pastoral care across the school.

Creativity

And as a school which has its foundations in performance, music and spirituality, we wanted to continue to be a shining light for creativity. As well as daily wellbeing sessions run by our sports department, visual and performing arts featured heavily in our programme. Each afternoon our Creativity Hub opened up and gave our pupils access to lessons and activities in music, art and design and storytelling. We even launched ECS:Choristers@Home to keep our core strands of Choristership alive.

A day in the life of a pupil in remote learning

We streamlined the timetable so that busy families could easily keep track of the daily pattern. Every pupil started their day with live ‘morning welcome’ sessions with their form teacher and friends. This was the backbone of our online pastoral provision and allowed us to continue to be a school where people matter.

Supporting staff, parents and families

Staff training was integral to the success of remote learning. We ran training events to allow teachers to learn about Teams and provided time to practise in designated Training Huddles. All of this was, of course, done remotely! We also provided parents with a weekly evening training session.

We sent out a weekly ECS:Learning@Home update, complete with videos and snippets from the week, and – crucially – a ‘You Said, We Did’ feature: this gave parents and pupils a voice, and helped us to unify our efforts and build a cohesive home-school community committed to improvement.

Pupil and staff outcomes in remote learning

Using Teams allowed us to keep doing what we love – coming together each day as a school community. We genuinely stayed connected and, in amongst all of the learning, had a whole lot of fun!

As a staff body we held games and quizzes, kept the banter flowing through Teams chat, and even had a lipsync battle with senior pupils. Teams also meant that our pupils were able to take their public exams. In fact, the class of 2020 equalled the School’s best-ever public exam results.

The success of our ECS:Learning@Home programme seems to have resonated locally and more widely. We currently have more enquiries than ever before from families who want to explore an ECS place for their child.

How remote learning impacts our future plans

We have now adopted a blended-learning approach to our curriculum with the support of Teams, using it to further pupils’ independent learning skills. Live speakers are now joining us for assemblies and Enrichment Talks via Teams to speak about topical issues and our Pupil Voice initiative continues to thrive digitally.

We see our blended learning approach being integral to our provision over the coming months and years – it’s here to stay.

Find out more

Discover more about ECS’s journey

Get started with hybrid learning

Learn about remote learning

About the author

James Featherstone is the Headmaster of Exeter Cathedral School. His job is to lead and manage the School, look after the team of staff, and to make sure that the 260 pupils and their families have the best possible educational journey. Before joining ECS, James was on the Senior Leadership Team at the Perse School in Cambridge.

Outside of school James enjoys singing, travelling through France (he’s a linguist by training), and doing his best to keep up with his two children on their adventures together.

The post How to deliver a balanced approach to remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

More than ever, students are now accessing and engaging with learning through their own mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets. One of the main benefits of using podcasts, are that they don’t require the consumer of the content to be viewing a screen. This can often prove both flexible and convenient, particularly as the files can be listened to in a variety of settings – e.g. while out exercising, or even when relaxing in the evening.

So, the concept sounds great – but how do you actually create a podcast? This blog will take you through some key steps to creating your very first podcast, using many tools available within the Microsoft Office 365 suite.

1) Planning the content for the podcast

Before starting to record a podcast, there are some key factors to consider:

• • Who are the intended listeners?
  • How might they be accessing the content?
  • Are you recording ‘solo’, or wanting to capture a conversation with multiple participants?
  • What recording setup do you currently have?
  • Are you likely to require any further equipment?

Addressing these points will help ensure that you are prepared to record your first podcast.

2) Recording the podcast

The main hardware requirement for getting started with podcasting, would be either a smart phone, tablet, laptop or PC with a built-in microphone. A dedicated external microphone will likely enhance the quality of audio, but is not essential to the recording process. A set of earphones or headphones can also be useful for blocking out unwanted background noise during the recording process.

If you are simply looking to record ‘solo’, then you can use the Voice Recorder app built into Windows 10. This provides basic recording and editing features, and is one of the simplest ways of capturing audio content. Most modern mobile devices also come with their own built-in app, which will have a similar level of functionality.

However, if your aim is to capture a conversation between multiple participants e.g. between a host and several guests, then Microsoft Teams can offer a suitable solution.

Firstly, you will need to arrange a Microsoft Teams meeting to host the conversation, and then invite in any other participants. Once in the Teams meeting, you can select Start Recording by clicking ‘…’, which will begin recording any audio and video being shared by the participants. Once finished, you can follow a similar process to Stop Recording.

Although you are not likely to need any visuals for an audio podcast, it can be useful to have cameras switched on as a visual aid throughout the recording process. This really helps with making a virtual conversation feel much more natural – as participants can often benefit from seeing body language and visual cues.

3) Editing the content

It’s not always essential to edit a podcast. However, you may wish to tidy up your recording before publishing. If using Voice Recorder, this is possible within the application itself.

If you have recorded within a Microsoft Teams meeting, you can use the Trim video function within Microsoft Stream. If you want to retain the video captured within the podcast, then sharing as part of a Microsoft Stream channel (within your organisation), may prove a suitable option.

If you are wanting to extract just the audio from your recording (to be hosted elsewhere), or wish to do some additional editing, such as adding background music or adding an intro/outro – this will likely require the use of audio editing software. You could check with your organisation to see what software you might already have available to you. Audacity is a free open-source alternative, which provides plenty of functionality for anyone looking to get started with audio editing.

4) Hosting the final podcast

Once you have recorded and edited your podcast, your next consideration is where to host it. There are many ways that you can host a podcast online. One way of doing this via your Office 365 account, would be to use Microsoft Sway. Sway is described as Microsoft’s digital storytelling tool, and allows great flexibility to embed different types of multimedia content – including audio. Here are a few simple steps to get started with your podcast in Microsoft Sway:

1. 1. Select Create New
   2. Source a suitable image to use as cover art, and Insert as an Image Card
   3. Set the image Emphasis, as appropriate
   4. Create an Audio Card, and upload the relevant audio file
   5. Add any additional info (episode no., topic, guests etc) into the Caption box
   6. Use the Group function to link both the Image and Audio

These steps can easily be repeated to add further podcast episodes within the same Sway.

Using the Styles option within Design, will also allow you to customise the way that your Sway looks and feels. Selecting the Slides navigation mode often provides a clear and simple way of navigating between individual podcast episodes.

The Play button will provide a preview of how your Sway looks, and once you are happy, you can click the Share button to obtain a shareable weblink. This can very easily be embedded within a Team, using the Website option when adding a new tab to a channel.

Putting the steps into practice

Our DigiLearn podcast might give you a bit of inspiration to support you on your own journey to creating and sharing podcasts with your students.

Below is a quote from Nicky Varley – an MIE Expert and Lecturer in Children’s Nursing at the University of Central Lancashire, who has started exploring the use of podcasts within her teaching.

“The podcast was recorded via Microsoft Teams and then uploaded to our Virtual Learning Environment for the students to listen to. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and they appreciated that we could share our stories within the podcast – something the students said they had really missed from the classroom. The trouble with no longer being face to face, is you miss that interaction with students, and sometimes online teaching can feel a little cold. Within nursing, sharing our past experiences really helps to paint a picture for our students. This is something I know I have really struggled to recreate with other forms of technology, but now podcasting seems to have changed that. By using this approach, not only are we being inclusive, we are also being creative.”

There are many different approaches to creating and hosting podcasts utilising many of the tools within Office 365, and we would encourage you to share any of your own innovative approaches with the wider #MicrosoftEDU community.

Find out more

How to use Voice Recorder

Recording a meeting in Teams

Create channels in Microsoft Stream

Digital storytelling with Microsoft Sway

Recording a podcast for accessible learning

About the author

Chris is a Senior Learning Technologist at the University of Central Lancashire, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Since 2018, he has led development of UCLan’s innovative and sector-endorsed DigiLearn model and programme – to support, recognise and reward colleagues in relation to their inclusive and innovative digital practice. Widening collaboration across the sector, Chris also co-ordinates UCLan’s DigiLearn Sector – an active community, connecting over 1000 digital practitioners across HE, FE, schools, and beyond. As a Microsoft Learning Consultant, he now works with other institutions – supporting their adoption of Microsoft technologies to improve both staff and student outcomes. Chris also makes regular appearances presenting at both national and international education conferences. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisLearnTech.

The post New ways of learning: 4 steps to record and share a podcast with your students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Sometimes, having a lesson plan is the easiest part and recorded and uploading the lesson can be daunting. But we’ve got a step-by-step guide on how to record, upload, and share your presentations.

We’ll be doing this through PowerPoint and Microsoft Stream, which makes it easy to use and accessible, with transcripts and captions.

Add narration and record your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has a really great feature to help you easily develop new content by adding audio narration to existing slides. This can also prove really useful for students when recording assessed presentations.

Top tip: Presentation Coach helps you prepare in private to give more engaging presentations.

1. Setting up the Recording tab in PowerPoint

Before you can use the Recording feature, you will need to make sure it’s in your main ribbon in PowerPoint.

1. Go to File, then Options, choose the Customise Ribbon tab.
2. On the list on the left hand side, change Popular Commands to All Tabs and find the Recording tab. Press add and it will move to your Ribbon. Press OK.
3. On the main ribbon tab, go to Slide Show, and it should be there.

2. Recording audio narration over your slides

Once you have added the Recording tab, you can then use the Record Slide Show function. This will allow you to record audio and video, over each slide in the sequence. You can pause or stop at any time, and re-record any sections that you are not happy with.

3. Exporting your slides as a video

Once you’re happy with the audio-narrated slide content, you can then proceed with exporting it to a video. This can either be exported locally to an MP4 video file, or alternatively, published directly to your Microsoft Stream account when using Office 365.

Effectively sharing your virtual lesson on Stream

Once you have uploaded your presentation to Stream, you will want to share them with your learners. You also might want to share other videos with colleagues or learners. These could include Microsoft Teams Meeting recordings, or other content.

The great thing about Stream is it can autogenerate captions using Automatic Speech Recognition technology. These are also available as a transcript so users can look for specific points in the video later on.

Top tip: Make your lesson more engaging by adding a quiz using Microsoft Forms.

1.      Turn on captions on your video

If you’ve already uploaded a video, you can go to the Edit Video option. Otherwise, you can do this as you’re uploading a video. In the Details section, select your supported language.

On the Options tab, set Autogenerate captions to On.

It may take a while for the captions to generate – It typically takes 1-2 times the video’s duration. For example, a one hour video, could wait around two hours to finish processing.

2. Sharing an individual virtual lesson in Microsoft Stream

Once signed-in to Microsoft Stream, your video content can be found under My Content. Individual videos can be shared easily via web-link, email or embed code.

3. Curating and sharing a Channel of Stream video content

By creating a Channel in Stream, you can group related video content for easy access and viewing. This can prove particularly useful for curating collections of video-based learning resources.

4. Adding your virtual lesson to Microsoft Teams

As well as sharing your Videos and Channels using a link, email, or embed code – you can also embed content directly into Microsoft Teams. This helps maintain a streamlined experience for your learners, and ensures content is organised and accessible within the learning environment.

Creating engaging virtual lessons

By using PowerPoint and Stream, you can deliver engaging, accessible virtual lessons that you can share to your Class Teams, or share with learners and other educators. This will help create a fun, smooth learning experience for everyone, no matter where they are.

Find out more

Discover our remote learning resources

About the author

Chris is a Senior Learning Technologist at the University of Central Lancashire, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Since 2018, he has led development of UCLan’s innovative and sector endorsed DigiLearn model, to recognise and reward the inclusive digital practice of academic colleagues. Widening collaboration across the sector, Chris also co-ordinates UCLan’s DigiLearn Sector – a community fostered to connect digital practitioners from across HE, FE, schools, and beyond. As a Microsoft Learning Consultant, Chris now works with other institutions – supporting their adoption of Microsoft technologies, to improve both staff and student outcomes. He is also producer and co-host of the EdTech Talks podcast, and you can follow him on Twitter @ChrisLearnTech.

The post How to make engaging virtual lessons for students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.