So what does teaching look like when our students aren’t sat directly in front of us? What does it really mean to teach remotely? How do you inspire, manage, care for, and engage your students whilst you’re sat in your own home and they are in theirs? It can be difficult and daunting to find new ways of working in these times of change, especially when you are pushed out of your comfort zone and regular routine.

To help you deliver an uninterrupted experience for your students through virtual and remote learning, four of our top Microsoft Innovative Fellows have begun to explore these questions within their own schools and have kindly shared their insights with us.

1. Take the first step

Jimmy Edwards from St. Hele’s School in Plymouth recounts his first attempt at remote learning with Teams, what he learned and his tips to get started when you and your students are brand-new to Teams and remote learning.

Read more: 3 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams for remote learning

2. Prepare your workspace

Paul Watkins from Ygsol Bae Baglan in Port Talbot gives us his top tips for preparing your work station at home to be ‘teacher-ready’ even if you are wearing your fuzzy slippers. He shares his tips on how to take the fear out of being on camera with you students and how you can embrace Teams to help you reach your students remotely.

Read more: How to set up a remote learning workspace in 4 easy steps

3. Encourage student collaboration

Elaine Topham from Grimsby Institute outlines a variety of tools you may want to consider to foster communication and collaboration while in a remote learning situation. She has compiled a view of Office 365 tools that can help you with instruction and assessment.

Read more: Tools to support teachers with remote learning

4. Equip your students for the future digital workplace

Sarah Clark from Queen Anne’s High School in Fife shares with us a differentiated approach to remote learning. Making reaching your students accessible even if you are a novice at Teams or a seasoned technologist. Modelling a growth mindset with your students, sets them up for success in their future careers- particularly if they are using the same remote working technologies they will be using after they leave school

Read more: How to use Microsoft Teams for remote learning: tips for all abilities

While you may not need to utilise remote learning at this time, it is an excellent option when you consider your contingency planning for emergencies and disaster recovery. Floods, snow, fire, or other incidents that can prevent students from attending school require a thoughtful approach to remote learning.

Find out more

Explore resources to support remote learning

Discover how Imperial College London used Teams to connect and engage remotely

About the author

Jennifer King is an award-winning, international thought leader in Education with 20 years of experience in the education sector from classroom to corporations. She is passionate about the success of students and their teachers and how the power of technology can transform the way they work and learn. Jennifer was previously the Head of Film and Media at Strode’s College in Surrey before starting her own education consultancy. JKES was a Microsoft Education Partner with a focus on digital transformation, project based learning, and teacher professional development. Jennifer is also the creator of the Student Teacher Education Program. She has recently returned from Microsoft Corp in Seattle, where she was the Director of Education in 21^st Century Jobs, Skills, and Employability.

The post 4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Here are a range of ways I have used Microsoft Teams in my secondary school classroom when I have needed to implement remote learning in the past to help guide you on how you can make the most of technology in these challenging times.

1. I’m a Microsoft Teams newbie

If you don’t have much experience with Microsoft Teams and are looking to use it to communicate with your pupils when they are not in school, the ‘Files’ section is a great place to upload documents for the pupils to access.

I use the ‘Files’ section in Teams when I want pupils to complete past exam paper questions by uploading the past paper as a PDF to the class materials folder. Pupils cannot edit files in the class materials folder. I then post a comment in the chat to let them know the file has been uploaded and tell them which questions I want them to complete.

My pupils will complete the work and later that day, I post the file with the answers so pupils can self-assess their work.

Pupils can also upload a picture of their work and ask for help at any point during the day.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In your class Team click on the ‘Files’ tab and upload files from your computer/OneDrive.
  • In the ‘Chat’ tab at the top, post a comment to tell pupils what file you want them to access and what you want them to do.
  • Pupils can respond by commenting in the chat or uploading a photo of the work in their notebook

2. I’ve mastered the basics

If you have mastered the basics of using Teams and have been sharing files with pupils, you may want to start setting assignments for them using Teams too.

For me, this is an easy way to distribute a file to each pupil in the class and have pupils work on a task with a specific deadline. The file could be a Word document, PowerPoint, Forms quiz,  or even a OneNote page amongst other formats.

My senior pupils recently had to complete a lab report for an experiment they did in class. In the assignments tab in Teams, I inserted a blank Word document, added the headings for each section (aim, method, results, conclusion) and sent this out for pupils to complete within 2 days.

Straight away I could see who has viewed the assignment and who had completed it. I could view each pupil’s work without leaving Teams and was able to give them feedback with next steps. Pupils were then able to make changes and resubmit their work.

By setting assignments in Teams your pupils will be able to easily check when their assignments are due, you’ll be able to see who has viewed and completed their assignments, and you are both able to check on progress and feedback throughout. You will also only have to upload one copy of the file which can then be distributed to all pupils.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In your class Team click on the ‘Assignments’ tab
  • Select ‘create new assignment’ and add your file
  • Add a date and a time for the assignment to be completed
  • You can view the progress of your students at any time by clicking on that specific assignment
  • Once pupils have submitted you can look at each one and return it to the pupil along with your feedback.

3. I’m an advanced Teams user

Once you have mastered ‘assignments’ in Teams, you may want to host a live lesson for your class. You can use the ‘meet now’ feature or you can schedule a meeting at a particular time. This may seem daunting at first but it is a great way for students to know lessons will carry on, with the expectation of everyone attending in a virtual classroom.

The first time I tried a live lesson, I turned off my camera before joining the live meeting and shared my desktop with the pupils. I was then able to take them through a PowerPoint presentation, work through a biology question in OneNote, and even show the pupils how to create a graph.

Offline, I have used my phone as a visualiser and uploaded the video to the files section in Teams so pupils can watch on demand at a time that suits them. This worked very well when pupils were unable to meet at the specific time. You may even want to record the live lesson so pupils can watch later.

Here are some other things you could do:

• • In the chat section, select ‘meet now’ (the small video camera button at the bottom of the page)
  • To schedule a meeting go to your calendar and select ‘new meeting’ then a specific time.
  • Once in the meeting the toolbar has various option (share desktop, record meeting and blur background, live captions and there is a chat panel for students to type questions)

Whether you are an experienced Teams user or not, there are a variety of options available to you to ensure learning doesn’t stop because you and your students cannot be at school. I have found these tools very beneficial in my science class and pupils have found them easy to use on a computer or on their phone.

I would recommend testing it out with students first if you can.  Have them join the Teams site and download the app to their phone so they can receive notifications. My students us the join code (generated in settings) to access the site initially and I task them with taking a photo of their work on their phone and uploading it to the site so I can check they are comfortable using it.

There is a wealth of resources available online to help with remote learning and the product teams are always on Twitter to help when needed, check them out using #msftedu and @DominicWillit

Find out more

4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience

Remote teaching and learning in Office 365 Education 

About the author

The post How to use Microsoft Teams for remote learning: tips for all abilities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

If your organisation uses a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, then you already have the tools available to deliver quality teaching and learning remotely.

Improve communication

Microsoft Teams provides the perfect platform for you to communicate effectively with your students. If you don’t already have a Teams site setup, it’s quick and easy. If you setup a Class Team, you will have the ability to set assignments via Teams. Teams allows peer-to-peer or teacher-to-student chat, collaboration, video calls, and online meetings. It stores chats and files securely and the search bar allows the user to quickly find what they need.

If you don’t have Microsoft Teams, then email could be used to enable communication with your students. Depending on your school, college, or university policy regarding teacher-to-student communications, you may also be able to post updates and links to students and/or parents using a social media platform.

Create remote and on-demand lessons

PowerPoint Recorder allows you to record audio, video, and digital ink over your PowerPoint presentations. These can then be published to Microsoft Stream or exported as a video to upload to another video hosting site. You can then use your chosen communication method to send these out to students or post them to Teams or VLE.

Learn more

Flipped instruction with PowerPoint Recorder

Encourage collaboration

In traditional classrooms, students would work together on documents, sometimes digitally but often on paper. When working remotely, Office 365 can provide the tools needed to enable students to work together collaboratively across a range of devices. It updates in real-time, meaning collaboration and feedback is instant.

Other tools you could use to allow your students to collaborate include Sway and OneNote. If you’re using a Class Team then you will already have a Class Notebook area. Class Notebook helps you be more organised with a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities.

Visually striking digital stories can be created with Sway. These can also be built by a group of students via a collaboration link.

Learn more

Streamline efficiency with Office 365 apps

Digital Storytelling with Microsoft Sway

Getting Started with OneNote

Digital questioning and assessment

There are many tools you can use for questioning and assessment but depending on whether you’d like to review the understanding later, or get more creative, you could use Quizzes in Microsoft Forms or Flipgrid videos.

Flipgrid is quick and easy to set up, you create a Grid and Topics and share these with your students. Leave instructions and link resources on the topics, so students understand what they need to do. You can even create advanced rubrics for assessing your student’s contributions.

Microsoft Forms can be used to create multiple choice quizzes, which can then be added to Teams or shared with students to complete. You can view the summary of responses for the class or view individual student results. The form settings allow you to change whether the students can have multiple attempts and they’re quick to create and share.

Learn more

Flipgrid – Educators Getting Started Guide

Creating Authentic Assessments

Whichever selection of tools you choose to use, there is support available to help you transition from teaching in the class to teaching online. It may seem daunting at first but remember the first day you stepped into the classroom and how you felt then and this is no different to that, but now your classroom is virtual!

Find out more

4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience

About the author

Elaine has worked for over 10 years in education, delivering ICT qualifications and training in Further Education, Higher Education, community learning, and apprenticeships. She now works as a Senior Learning Technologist at the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education. In the role, she helps more than 400 academic staff implement technology solutions in the classroom, as well as fully integrating Office 365 technologies into the work processes of support staff. As a MIE Expert and active member of the Microsoft Educator Community, Elaine drives the adoption of learning technologies throughout the Grimsby Institute and provides Microsoft Office Specialist training and support for staff development. Dedicated and passionate, Elaine recognises the growing need for digital capabilities within teaching, and believes that with the right support, technology creates better learning experiences.

The post Tools to support teachers with remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Whether you are planning to live-stream your lessons online through Microsoft Teams or record your them with the Recorder option in PowerPoint, the environment and location of where you deliver this from is important. When we set up a classroom, we always consider the environment that our pupils are going to be taught in and we strive to ensure that is it conducive to learning with engagement at its core.

Here are some practical tips to help you establish your remote learning area at home:

1. Set up the room

The location that you choose as your remote learning workspace is really important. Ideally, you need a clear environment that will enable you to be productive throughout the day. Try and find a room where doors can be closed to reduce background noise as much as possible. ASD pupils may find it difficult to focus on your voice if there are noise distractions so this is a crucial step to create an inclusive remote learning environment for all your students.

If you are going to be recording learning content, you need to make sure your room is well lit and that you have a good balance between both natural and electrical lighting. Test out different options before you start to record and make sure the video picture is clear for your students.

2. Test audio and video quality

Whilst devices have a mic built into them and it is often sufficient, it can always be improved with the help of an external microphone. From previous experience, I have found a headset microphone is the best at noise cancellation to minimise distractions from your lesson. If you are using a webcam, I’d recommend testing the quality and positioning of it before your lesson. You may need to use the external webcam if the quality of the internal one is poor.

3. Consider how you will deliver the lesson

If you are planning to record lessons via PowerPoint to ensure it can be accessible for your student at any time of the day, try and avoid sitting with your back to a window or wall that is full of distractions. The students need to be focused on you, not the things behind you.

For those of you who would prefer to use Microsoft Teams to live-stream your lessons, make sure you have uploaded all of the files to the Teams site prior to the lesson so you can easily show students where to find the work when you share your screen. I’d recommend trying to keep the video to screen sharing where possible to keep pupils focused on the work but if you do need to be on camera, make sure that background blur is enabled. This will ensure background distractions are minimised and is a reminder to your students on why the connection is taking place.

4. Set some ground rules

Make sure you set expectations with your pupils the same as you would in a classroom environment and familiarise yourself with how to mute pupils if they are interupting the lesson. Encourage students to ask questions through the chat panel. This way even your quieter students will be given a voice and everybody will have a chance to be heard. Just make sure you monitor it throughout the lesson.

On a more practical note, if there are other people at home, make sure they know you are delivering a lesson and ask them not to disturb you during it.

For many teachers this is a real step out of their comfort zone but we have these wonderful tools available to us, and our pupils, that can help us through a difficult time, whilst ensuring that every effort is made to help pupils achieve the best outcomes they can. And remember, there is a wonderful community of teachers available to help and support you during this time.

Find out more

Using PowerPoint recorder for your lessons 

Introduction to Microsoft Teams

4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience

About the author

Paul ‘Lanny’ Watkins is an IT/Computing Teacher at Ysgol Bae Baglan, a Microsoft Showcase School. He is a Microsoft Innovative Educator Fellow, Master Trainer, Skype Master Teacher and Flipgrid Student Voice Executive Board Member. Recently acknowledged in the 2020 EdTech 50, Paul is also a member of Welsh Government’s National Digital Learning Council.

The post How to set up a remote learning workspace in 4 easy steps appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At the University of Sunderland where I am Deputy Technical Director and Head of IT, our ambitions are based around three main themes, which are:

• Being student focussed, by providing transformative experiences to our learners.
• Being professions facing, by developing highly skilled graduates who are ready for work and are career focussed.
• Being society shaping, by leading research, innovation and practice.

Underpinning this there are a raft of issues and opportunities. This could be improving the overall student experience, aiding access and participation, growing new and emerging markets both domestically and internationally, and attainment and progression.

Finding the right tools for the job

Those of us who work in IT are often tasked with providing the technology-based solutions to help support and fuel these ambitions. I often ask myself these two fundamental questions:

• How do we play a central role in the delivery of these ambitions in a world of technological possibilities whilst maintaining financial stability with predictability in cost base and the ability to flex?
• Do the services we provide meet the ever-changing needs of the business?

We took an assessment of the environment and the hundreds of applications used by university staff and students. One of the major challenges we faced was around the silos of adopted innovations with specific functionality and limited viability used. We needed something better, more integrated, more functional and something that offered more opportunity.

For many years, a platform-based approach has been the nirvana, and now they exist, Microsoft is leading the way in terms of the technology and affordability.

An all-in-one platform

In my own institution we have chosen, after many years of assessment and planning, to adopt a data centre zero strategy. We removed the large on-campus data centres and pushed production workloads into a newly designed Azure environment.

This allows those employees who would have been traditionally maintaining equipment and supporting services to reskill, reinvent, and hone their talents to design and develop new services to support the improvements in academy. They’ve streamlined and simplified administration which has ultimately led to an improved student experience and therefore student success.

We chose to consolidate on a platform that provides a common toolset for managing our infrastructure and our data. This provides the ability to refine systems of record, improve management information, and business intelligence. This opens up the opportunities in terms of big data, analytics, and AI.

The use of Microsoft PowerBI as a tool shows insights for the University community by communalising information. This gives a clear and consistent picture of the performance of the organisation. It also highlights the engagement of students, and allows data-based reflection on the services we provide.

We also enjoy the ability to build environments in a consistent online platform using PowerApps. It delivers on any device and removes the burden of the past by promoting and supporting innovation.

Built with accessibility

Accessibility is at the fore of our approach with a sector average of around 15 percent of students recording some form of disability in 2017. Microsoft’s approach to accessibility makes a significant difference to how we can deliver services for all. It also helps us support staff and students to get the very best from the experiences we can provide.

The ongoing adoption of Microsoft Office 365 for staff and students opens up opportunity for collaboration. Because users can access Office 365 anywhere on any device, they can work in the way they see fit. Office 365 is accessible-by-design and fitted with a range of tools to help people with limited vision, hearing, speech, mobility, and learning abilities to create, communicate, and collaborate on content.

With this comes the need to address the capabilities of both staff and students. We are working with JISC and their Digital Capabilities Framework to help build vital skills. We also have adopted LinkedIn Learning. Using these tools in combination allow us to assess digital capabilities, identify opportunities for development, and then provide a direct link to the learning materials and communities which support those developments.

Building collaboration, productivity, and business value

Rolling out a platform-based approach with all the assessments, planning, collaboration, and pure effort to make it work is not to be underestimated. All parts of the business and the community play an important role in bringing this together. This includes staff, students, and the Microsoft teams who help support the sector with advice and guidance.

The ability for the institution and its staff and students to seamlessly engage together, along with developing research, innovation, and contributing to practice is powerful. It shows how the right technology choices can help deliver to the ambitions of the university.

Find out more

Transforming higher education

About the author

David Conway is Deputy Technical Director and Head of IT at University of Sunderland in the north east of England. He is leading a programme of business change enabled by new and innovative digital solutions.

The post Driving better university outcomes with technology appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The programme has been running for 18 months and aims to equip staff and students with the knowledge, skills, and tools to achieve success in a changing digital world.

Future Facing Learning is comprised of 5 core areas:

• Future Ready
• Socially and Ethically Engaged
• Research Active
• Globally Connected
• Digitally Empowered

We’ve found real success when using this framework to embed digital skills training and development into our culture. Here are 5 steps to successfully embed digital skills into your own school, college or university based on learnings from our own journey.

Step 1 – Research your goals

Our Digitally Empowered strand focuses on digital skills, and how they can be embedded into the learning and teaching experience of our students.

With many industry reports showing graduates can lack digital skills, we wanted to empower ours with real-world skills that  support their employability post-degree, and prepare them for the future digital workplace. To achieve that, we knew the scheme had to be adopted across the university, with commitment to a long-term plan.

To enable this, we decided to give academic staff and students a mobile device, access to a digital toolkit of applications, and the support to meaningfully embed practices into their teaching and learning experiences.

With our objectives in mind, at the beginning of 2018, we focused on the big picture: What would the initiative look like? What would the digital toolkit contain? How could we get staff and students to embrace it?

During our research phase, we studied what skills employers were looking for – and it quickly became apparent that Office 365 needed to be front and centre of the toolkit. This conclusion was supported by research from the IDC. It showed Microsoft Office skills were in high demand, and linked to many digital skills and capabilities.

Building on work conducted by Jisc around digital literacies, we also worked on how to map these findings against a development programme that would up-skill and support staff.

Step 2 – Create a development programme

Our Digital Development programme was deliberately structured in a way that let us link different parts of Office 365 to the core digital literacies:

• Future Facing Learning
• Deploying Content
• Promoting Curation
• Fostering Collaboration
• Nurturing Creation
• Measuring Impact

We designed the programme to be delivered in 6 hours, offering staff practical examples of how to use the available tools to support digital literacies. For example, one such session focused on using OneNote to create interactive resources. These could then be reused for different cohorts. In another, staff saw how Word’s collaborative tools allow students to work together remotely and in real-time.

A decision was also made to place Microsoft Teams at the heart of the DDP. Each cohort would be added to a Teams site, enabling them to interact with others during and after training. It quickly became the default communications platform both in and out of the physical training space. Attendees naturally gravitated towards this space as a community of practice, asking questions and sharing resources.

Step 3 – Use the Microsoft Educator Community

The Microsoft Educator Community (MEC) is an unrivalled resource. Foolhardy is the school or college that ignores it when launching a digital skills programme.

In the case of Teesside University, we used it to enhance our development programme offering. We could map elements of what we would do in each strand of Future Facing Learning against MEC courses and resources. This gave staff the ability to unlock additional learning opportunities.

As well as supplying ready-made resources, Microsoft also runs educator programmes that recognise and reward achievement. By aligning our own DDP with this, we were able to issue digital badges, including the coveted Microsoft Innovative Educator badge, to staff who completed the programme. This would be the first step on a journey as part of a global community of educators.

Step 4 – Maintain momentum

Over the last 18 months, we’ve worked with staff to continually think about their teaching practice, and offer additional support and development. Masterclasses, for example, allow them to learn even more about one or more applications within the digital toolkit. Coaching sessions, too, open a dialogue between academic staff and a Digital Learning Developer. It lets them discuss what they’d like to see implemented in their learning and teaching, and how digital tools can support the pedagogy.

So far, over 400 staff have completed the DDP and redeemed codes in the MEC to become MIEs. Staff keen to build their digital skills are also encouraged to apply for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) programme. 43 Teesside staff have been accepted as MIEEs for 2019-2020.

But the university also wanted to study other ways to develop and showcase staff’s digital skills. We wanted a way for their development to be used as evidence for external validation. That’s when we started to offer staff – as well as students – the opportunity to sit Microsoft exams. Supported by Prodigy Learning, staff had access to both Microsoft Certified Educator and Microsoft Office Specialist exams. So far, 33 people have passed the MCE exam.

Microsoft Office Specialist exams have, on the other hand, proved very popular with students. This exam empowers students to learn, in-depth, about specific Office applications. Those that have completed the exam find they’re now more confident in using and applying the skills that we know employers seek.

Step 5 – Stay committed

We may only be 18 months into our journey, but already our Digital Development programme is making waves at Teesside. A cross-institution approach has helped us embed and build upon what we’re doing.

If you’re considering implementing your own digital strategy…

Think carefully about what you wish to achieve

Celebrate your champions

Showcase the great outcomes.

And most of all – stay committed to developing the skills of all your students and staff.

About the author

Richard has worked in the education sector for over 20 years, with the first 10 spent in technical roles at secondary level before moving on to Higher Education. Now at Teesside University, Richard’s role has evolved from Learning Technologist to Digital Learning Developer. This sees him work with staff from across the University around developing digital skills. Working from within a central team, he supports staff development, helping subject teams to combine digital skills and modern pedagogies into their learning & teaching.

The post 5 steps to embed digital skills development into schools, colleges and universities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’re going to be sharing a story every week for the 12 weeks of summer, showing you how healthcare organisations are using technology to transform patient outcomes and increase productivity. For the sixth blog in the series, Stephen Docherty, Industry Solutions Executive for Health, discusses his first-hand experience of implementing cloud computing to advance NHS healthcare services.

On King’s College campus, south London, two medical organisations came together to solve a problem: what the healthcare industry desperately needed was a way to speed up the translation of scientific discoveries into clinical trials and other studies, conducting research into new tests, treatments and theories in mental health.

The idea sparked the beginning of the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). This centre was developed by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London (IoPPN), and funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

When I first came on board as SLaM’s CIO – and meeting BRC colleagues, where I had a team managing the Clinical Records Interactive Search (CRIS) system – I was in awe. Machine learning was being applied to de-identified clinical records, which allowed PhD students and researchers to gain valuable insight from the data.

The system’s potential power really struck a chord. I wanted to help evolve it; to make it better, faster, smarter, and get that healthcare data into the cloud.

Cloud computing comes first

Our initial IT strategy focused on laying the foundations, future-proofing the services, and transforming into a ‘cloud-first’ organisation. This led to a great relationship with Microsoft. We evolved our IT services and worked towards a fully-digitised workforce. And we were fortunate to be one of the first two organisations to access the Azure cloud before anyone else in the UK.

As SLaM’s Digital Services department became more familiar with cloud computing, we made the decision to re-architect the aging CRIS system into Azure. This sped up the de-identification process. The next step was to develop the Natural Language Processing (NLP) capability in Azure. Our aim was to create an ‘NLP-as-a-service’ model other trusts could use.

Transforming digital services

Our digital transformation has, it turns out, naturally followed a three-phased approach.

SLaM’s initial IT strategy allowed us to future-proof IT services by fully adopting Office 365 and Azure cloud computing. This meant we also de-risked the environment as we developed new capabilities, leading to SLaM becoming London’s global digital exemplar (GDE) for mental health. We embraced the cloud and understood the power of platforms.

With radically improved digital services, we realised that we had to help our staff adopt the technology and platforms. This saw us develop SLaM’s next-generation digital strategy, with staff co-designing learning and coaching programmes with us.

This helped them all comfortably adopt Office 365, particularly Microsoft Teams. SLaM is a multi-site, multi-service, and multi-disciplined Trust – so, the use of Teams has enabled collaboration across the various programmes and services.

Driven by data

The third phase, which evolves from our IT and digital strategies, will transform SLaM into a data-driven organisation. Data must lie at the heart of our every decision. That’s what drove us to create our data strategy. It was approved by the Trust Board in May 2019, just before I took up my role as Health Executive for Microsoft.

This strategy uses data to learn, improve services, and evolve business intelligence. Front-line clinicians will finally have the right information, right at their fingertips, blessing them with ‘the gift of time.’

Additionally, SLaM’s plan is to use research capabilities with CRIS and NLPaas. This strategy will link different datasets to derive insight, driving continuous improvement. Once the basics are right, and you have the right tools, getting insight is the natural next step. For SLaM, Microsoft Office 365 and Azure has been fundamental to implementing that.

About the author

Stephen Docherty is a Microsoft Industry Executive for Health, engaging healthcare professionals and organisations and empowering their work through modern technology. Before joining Microsoft, he spent over 4 years as Chief Information Officer for South London and Maudsley NHS FT, bringing a different perspective to the NHS’s digital transformation – a time he describes as ‘fantastic’.

The post 3 steps to evolving healthcare in the cloud appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’re going to be sharing a story every week for the 12 weeks of summer, showing you how healthcare organisations are using technology to transform patient outcomes and increase productivity. For the fifth blog in our series, Hannah Rowlands, Account Executive for Microsoft UK Healthcare and Life Sciences shares 9 ways that accessibility can be improved in healthcare organisations by leveraging digital tools.

This week, I had a revelation.

To my surprise, whilst going through the Accessibility in Action Digital Badge at Microsoft, I learnt that there are one billion people worldwide living with a disability. Over 70% of those disabilities are invisible. Even more shockingly, only one in 10 have access to assistive technology that can make them more independent and productive.

NHS Digital has just expanded its service manual to include guidance on making digital services more accessible by putting people at the heart of its designs. Accessible-by-design technologies create more inclusive and diverse workforces. Such diversity has always been integral to the NHS, and the wider healthcare industry.

Re imagining digital inclusion and accessibility in healthcare

Microsoft 365 is packed with built-in assistive technologies, so you can get started on reshaping the inclusive workplace and the way your employees work.

1. Read Aloud

Collaborating on important clinical documents can be complex. It’s a particular challenge for those with visual impairments or difficulty depicting words. The Read Aloud function does just that; allowing on-screen words to be spoken aloud for maximum engagement.

2. Dictate

Imagine if clinicians could spend more time focused on caring for patients and less time struggling to type information from one format to another. Dictate, part of Office Intelligent Services, lets you use the power and speed of your voice. That gives you time back to focus on producing even better patient outcomes.

3. Automatic alt-text

Alt-text helps those with visual impairments ‘see’ images online. Hover a cursor over an image, and a text description explains what’s in the picture. This works online – any website worth their salt should be including alt-text – and in programs and tools. While laudable and necessary, adding alt-text to images can also be time-consuming. That’s why Microsoft Word and PowerPoint both automatically generate word descriptions for those that need it.

4. Presentation Translator Add-in

The NHS is one of the most diverse organisations serving a hugely diverse population. This has an impact on both employee’s ability to access and collaborate inclusively in meetings, briefings, training, and MDTs.

It’s also important to consider how patients interact with content published by trusts, such as public board meetings, CEO updates, and patient advice videos.

Presentation Translator connects us. Built on Microsoft Translator APIs, and part of the Cognitive Services API collection, this tool enables businesses to add end-to-end, real-time speech translations to their applications or services. We recommend using this add-in with Microsoft Office 365 and Windows 10.

Simply put, the feature displays live subtitles over videos, with over 60 languages supported. You’ll now even be able to open up presentations to multi-lingual Q&A sessions or help hard-of-hearing audience members participate in the discussion.

5. Immersive reader

The NHS’s ‘Paperless 2020’ initiative mandates a serious shift away from paper towards system-wide digital content. The way we’re collaborating is changing, with employee and patient expectations rightfully becoming increasingly more demanding.

This is even more true for those with accessibility needs. Say someone with dyslexia joins your organisation. Those old paper forms that bombard every new starter are going to prove problematic for your latest employee. The original approach, therefore, needs adapting and updating.

The digital solution is Immersive Reader. Embedded into Teams, the tool speaks words aloud with simultaneous highlighting. This lets all users customise it to their preferred learning and focus techniques, with adjustable colours, spacing and lines.

6. Accessibility checker

Office 365’s Accessibility Checker shows the power technology can have in driving a culture based on diversity and inclusion – with people always at the centre.

It proactively scans and prompts you to make improvements, so your content is more accessible and inclusive. New features such as ‘Add Description’ and ‘Mark as Decorative’ allow simple, actionable steps with 1-click.

Imagine presenting new ground-breaking clinical research or running an induction for new junior doctors. You’ll be confident that everyone on the workforce is empowered to collaborate and participate in ways that ensure they feel included and productive.

7. Built-in slide designs

You don’t need a design or computer science degree to construct a professional and eye-catching set of slides

These days, you can conduct a presentation on the latest industry trends, outstanding team accomplishments, or drilling down into patient care reports and engage everybody in the room or on the call. This AI-powered feature makes designing slides easy as pie. And every time you create a new slide, it automatically makes the reading order accessible for everyone.

8. Microsoft Stream

Stream, Microsoft’s Enterprise video streaming platform, generates automatic transcripts for videos using speech to text AI capabilities. This is a particularly significant feature for the NHS with challenges around recruitment and retaining talent. Tools like these are critical to encouraging a career focus, loyalty, and confidence across the workforce. No matter where they are or what they need, Stream helps all employees stay up-to-date and in the loop.

9. MailTip

Prioritising content accessibility should be second-nature – however, for some, ever-increasing demands and ever-decreasing resources can make it difficult. MailTip can jog their memory. If you indicate within the tool that you prefer accessible content, it will remind your other collaborators to check the accessibility of their content. A good prompt for those who know the importance of accessibility, but can find it a struggle.

Accessibility in healthcare shouldn’t be an afterthought. The greatest success comes from using design-thinking from the outset to inform new features and capabilities. Across all of our varied roles and careers, increased accessibility is something which benefits us all, and it’s a responsibility shared by all of us.

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About the author

Hannah Rowlands is an Account Executive for Microsoft UK Healthcare and Life Sciences. She works with NHS Trusts across London and the South East, helping organisations deliver better patient care, optimise operations and empower employees. Hannah has previously worked for a large pharmaceuticals firm and in the Local and Regional Government Team in Public Sector at Microsoft. She’s passionate about Microsoft’s impact on accessibility in healthcare at a pivotal point for the NHS.

The post Inclusivity by design: 9 ways to improve accessibility in healthcare appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Microsoft Teams

For those who have never heard of Teams, it’s part of the Office 365 suite of applications and is a digital workspace that’s centred around secure chat, meetings, calls and files, combining all of Microsoft’s modern workplace applications inside one platform. Since its launch in 2017, Microsoft Teams has grown rapidly, driven by its impact on the productivity and digital transformation of workflow processes for employees. Teams’ extensibility as a platform can bring together information from siloed operational systems, such as line of business apps.

This is where it gets really exciting for healthcare, enabling clinicians to collaborate in real-time around patient information and patient flows from data and insights across a variety of clinical systems—all in one secure hub that minimizes switching between apps.

My first job in my new role, was to get my arms around this: What does the technology mean for healthcare? What real-life scenarios and results are we already seeing within the NHS?

In June, we hosted our first Teams for Healthcare hack with our partner Modality. 16 NHS customers, NHSD and partners came together to share best practices and learn how Teams is transforming services and flows across the NHS. The event has allowed us to hear, first-hand, the impact Teams has on workforces that use it every day.

Turn it ON for chat

The resounding agreement from everyone in the room was “let’s get Teams turned on.” There are employees that access Office 365, yet haven’t deployed Teams, with some workplaces unaware that they even have it! Yes, there are things we need to ensure get completed before rolling it out – network checks, Active Directory, and ensuring mobile security policies and solutions are in place – but our account teams stand ready to help you with this. Many NHS trusts, having completed much of the pre-work, are already using Exchange Online for secure mail.

Teams is based around security and delivering compliant chat capabilities. For healthcare this year, we added new secure messaging capabilities to Teams, including priority notifications and message delegation. We also introduced a smart camera with image annotation and secure sharing, so images stay within the platforms and aren’t auto-stored to the care providers’ devices.

The NHS customers all agreed it’s vital to replace the use of consumer apps that are not compliant with PID. They plan to make it simple for the front-line workforce by pushing out Teams for chat only. The new App setup policy means administrators can customise Microsoft Teams to highlight the most important apps for the end user. You choose the apps to pin and set the order they appear. Stripping the technology back to just display chat and shifts, for example, makes the user experience and adoption easy.

How Microsoft Teams is delivering real impact across the NHS

Reducing travel costs

Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS Foundation Trust shared their use of Teams for chat and collaboration around wound care. Employees on the ward chat with remote specialist nurses and schedule video meetings to conduct virtual wound care consults. This not only reduced travel costs and times for specialist nurses, but also saved time, enabling ward staff to better focus on receiving, consulting, and delivering appropriate treatment for patients.

Saving clinical time

MedxNote a Microsoft Teams Partner, is replacing their own chat app by surfacing their bots through Teams instead. Clinicians can sign up to the MedXnote BOT to receive live patient notifications and results in Teams. The MedXnote pilot ran at the University Hospital Southampton NHS FT has saved over 650 hours of clinical time by sending out 2440 messages via chat to the clinician’s mobiles. We look forward to seeing the extra capabilities and savings the move to Teams brings alongside these bots.

 “A consultant stopped me this morning to say he had followed a patient’s ultrasound scan via the BOT. At 8.46am, his phone beeped. He was then able to promptly discharge the patient, saving at least a day in hospital” – Jane Hayward, University Hospital Southampton NHS FT

Enabling next-generation video consultations with Microsoft Teams

With targets to reduce face-to-face appointments, and increased demand for services, video consultation is a hot topic. During our workshop, the NHS talked about success factors in the delivery of a video patient consultation services. They discussed, in detail, choosing the right service to see real improvements in demand versus capacity; national tariffs not reflecting the new video service offerings; and the importance of clinical team engagement from the start of a pilot.

In fact, many trusts already perform patient video consultations using Skype for Business. It’s a choice that’s helped improve patient outcomes, increase the number of patients seen within the same time period, and the faster delivery of more appropriate care.

Microsoft Teams offers the next generation of patient video consultations – with a roadmap of updates including background blur, Web RTC join, recording and transcribing services with Streams. To aid future plans, we have a range of trusts piloting Teams for patient consultations. By digitally transforming their workplace, they say they’re already seeing improvements to services andthe patient experience.

“I sat in the back of a consultation room and I watched the first appointment using Teams meetings. I could see the interaction of the staff and the patient. I don’t believe I would ever get such satisfaction in any other job! We have a model that works and are rolling this out to other clinics, and the feedback from workers is amazing. We are encouraged to work together to get results and put the patient first. I believe that Teams has allowed us to work to a standard we once would not have thought possible.” – Richard Hill, Collaboration Lead, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

Video meetings also speed up and simplify clinician-to-clinician contact across healthcare settings. Add into the mix all of Teams’ collaborative benefits and you have a powerful platform that makes running clinical meetings such as MDTs, quality reviews and board meetings effortless. The workshop revealed a seismic culture shift as trusts continue to implement Teams in inventive and productive ways – preparing for meetings, collating and sharing documents (or even co-creating them live on the platform). Feedback can be gathered, content requested, and the minutes of every meeting easily recorded and transcribed. These are all ways different NHS trusts are harnessing the power of Teams right now.

However, for those not yet making the jump, there’s a real need to start with the basics first, then to build out Teams’ capability as it organically grows across the trust.

How are other healthcare organisations practically using the features in Microsoft Teams?

Virtual meetings

NHS Bury CCG is delivering board meetings from six practices, across four locations via Teams. They’ve seen a 40% increase in the efficiency of board meetings, and saved 18 hours this year by not travelling to face-to-face meetings

 “We are much more efficient than we ever were. We haven’t physically met for over a year. All of our meetings take place over Teams, and all of our notes and actions are within Onenote.” – Mike Culshaw, Bury CCG

Screen-sharing

Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS FT talked about their virtual MDT pilot for community Heart Failure and Cardiology. They use screen-sharing over Teams meetings to share access to internal systems and details. As a result, they’ve saved 48 hours of clinical and service manager time, and 504 miles of travel. This equates to £340 travel savings in a year with just a single MDT meeting flow.

 “These MDTs ensure that our patients are getting the best quality and timeliest treatment to provide better outcomes.” – Amy Freeman, Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS FT

Digital notes

Teams is also used by Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust for a weekly pre-clinic discussion meeting for diabetes, as well as a weekly diabetes in children meeting group. By switching to digital notes, the the trust made savings on printing costs, as well as costs for a survey tool that can be now competed inside Teams with Forms, or Polly.

Bringing employees on-board with Microsoft Teams

But Teams isn’t just about clinical scenarios. Our workshop also highlighted an entertaining use case showcasing one way you can bring employees onboard with Teams as a platform – and I just love it!

Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS FT wanted to show the executive team the power of Teams as a platform in a fun way. The site has a coffee van, and employees queue along with others for up to 20 minutes to get their much-deserved coffee. The only other alternative was to text your coffee order ahead of time. Neither seemed suitable, or ground-breaking.

Craig McCaslin, the foundation trust’s Head of Office 365 Development, decided to build a Frothy Coffee App to showcase the power of Office 365 and Teams. He explained: “I saw the coffee-ordering app as an opportunity to reduce time taken to get your drinks, expose users to PowerApps without them even realising, expose users to Teams, with the app on a tab within a Teams channel, and try out a few technical things – guest access, item ordering, and adaptive cards. I also wanted to see what the developers could do with Teams as a platform. To be an advert for the company, showing what we could do with the Microsoft products.”

The order was taken, with details recorded in a SharePoint list. A flow would create the adaptive card, which notified the coffee seller that an order was being placed, which was then acknowledged by a quick reply to the card. Employees could then bypass the people queuing to pick up their drinks and pay.

As we work together to scale and drive new ways of working in healthcare, I continue to collate the amazing scenarios from across the NHS.

Satya Nadella says about Microsoft “You join here, not to be cool, but to make others cool.” My new role with Microsoft Teams embodies this. Watching NHS trusts come together over these two days, discovering their real-life use cases, and their drive to make things better is really cool.

If you’d like to know more, or join our NHS Network for Teams and engineering, where we work together to grow, feel free to get in touch.

Find out more

Empower your care team with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams for Healthcare

Microsoft 365 and health

6 Office 365 tools to enhance productivity in the NHS

About the author

Teams is the fastest growing app in Microsoft history, and healthcare organisations are pioneering its use to drive efficiencies. Kelly’s role is to align healthcare systems across Europe, their strategy and drive for patient-centric care with Microsoft Teams features and scenarios as a platform. Working in partnership with healthcare customers to tell their story of the transformation and impact that Teams as a platform can drive for clinical professionals and patients.

The post Microsoft Teams: a smart way to deliver cost-savings, save clinical time, and improve patient care appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Today marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s a day when we get to celebrate the progress our customers and partners have made to create more inclusive workplaces. It’s also a good time to look ahead at what more we can do as a community to empower everyone in the workplace.

We celebrate because our customers are empowering their employees both with the accessible technology built into Microsoft 365, and with the inclusive cultural practices that make people love coming to work. We are comparing notes and learning from them as we also continue to build that same inclusive culture at Microsoft.

We recently celebrated a milestone with recognition from the U.K. Government as a Disability Confident Leader. This status is awarded to organisations that commit to diversity and inclusion, and encourage suppliers and vendors to do the same. Our team has worked tirelessly to establish processes that create and sustain a diverse and inclusive culture:

• Attracting and recruiting people with disabilities via our global Inclusive Hiring Program.
• Training managers to understand the needs of those with visible and non-visible disabilities.
• Assessing people for roles more flexibly so those with disabilities have the best opportunity to show their skills.
• Adjusting workplaces to include sign language interpreters.
• Ensuring all staff have access to disability equality awareness training.

Features that empower

We also look ahead to our big vision—an accessible and inclusive workplace for everyone—and what more we can do as a company and as a community to make it a reality. We’re excited to announce that live captions and subtitles in PowerPoint will soon be generally available to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscribers worldwide for Windows, Mac, and the web. And we look forward to the coming release of other new inclusive technologies built into Microsoft 365, like live captions and subtitles in Teams meetings.

Present inclusively with live captions and subtitles in PowerPoint. We know how powerful a great presentation can be—whether it inspires us or aligns us to a common goal. Now, with support for 12 spoken languages and 60-plus on-screen captions or subtitle languages, people who are deaf or hard of hearing can be included in these important team-building moments. Additionally, with an increasingly global and remote set of collaborators, those who speak a different language from the presenter or are listening in from a loud environment, can also more easily be included.

Transform the meeting experience for people with disabilities. We also know the critical role meetings play in how we work, and recently announced that live captions and subtitles will also be available in Teams meetings. These capabilities are coming soon as a preview in English and complement the captioning and transcription features already generally available for recorded Teams meetings and live events in Stream, Teams, and Yammer. Whether in a one-to-one with your manager, or a company-wide all hands, everyone should feel included when the team gets together, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

We constantly release new features and improvements to make our products not just compliant with the latest standards, but empowering for all users, both with and without disability. We encourage you to read all about these features in the Microsoft Accessibility Features Sway.

Building the inclusive workplace together

Many of our customers are committed to making this vision of an inclusive workplace a reality and are partnering with us to realise that goal. Last month, the Federal Government of Canada chose Microsoft as a partner in its effort to create a more modern and accessible public service. The Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility, said, “Equipping our public servants with accessible, reliable, and innovative technologies will unleash the potential of our world-class public service and result in better service delivery for all Canadians.” At Microsoft, we agree. Only when we represent the diversity we see in the world internally can we build the most innovative technology and serve our customers as they should be served.

We also see Rogers Communications, a leading Canadian communications and media company, shares our vision of a more inclusive workplace. Rogers is transforming its physical workplace by being more collaborative and inclusive using the accessible technologies built into Microsoft 365 applications. Best of all, we’re helping and learning from each other along the way. Our teams work regularly with Rogers to understand how our technology can better support its commitment to building an inclusive workplace. Specifically, we listen to Rogers’ Persons with Disability Diversity group to learn how we can embed inclusive design principles into our products and culture. Read the full blog to learn more about how Rogers is building an inclusive culture to benefit employees, customers, and the broader community.

Join us!

We have so much more to do—as an organisation, an employer, a leader, and a follower—in this journey towards an accessible and inclusive workplace, and we hope you’ll join us. Visit the Microsoft Accessibility site to learn more about our approach. Share your learnings with #LearningTogether and #GAAD and continue the conversation with @MSFTEnable on Twitter.

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