As EDUCAUSE’s 2025 Top 10 IT Issues highlights, a leading priority is to build data-empowered institutions that use data, analytics, and AI to enhance decision-making, simplify workflows, and empower teams to improve student success.

Yet many institutions are still limited by siloed and inconsistent data spread across dozens of systems. Becoming data empowered takes more than new tools. It requires democratized data and insights, a clear strategy, and a culture that supports data-driven decision making.

A single, AI-powered platform can provide the secure foundation for unified data. It allows institutions to use AI in ways that are practical and measurable. It has the potential to connect disconnected systems and empower leaders, faculty, and staff with insights that create impact across many parts of the institution.

Building the foundation of a data-empowered institution

Becoming a data-empowered institution is not a one-time project but a continuous strategy that can transform how colleges and universities operate. Institutions that lead with data can:

• Drive institutional strategy with intelligent insights.
• Seamlessly govern and protect data across campus.
• Accelerate research workflows with generative AI.

While unified data and AI-powered insights are key enablers, institutions must also prioritize data security and governance to provide leaders with trusted insights for decision-making. With these fundamentals in place, data can become a trusted institutional asset that helps strengthen collaboration across teams and break down departmental silos. When data is managed as an institutional asset, leaders can make informed decisions and allocate resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.

Microsoft Fabric helps unify data and teams to apply AI at scale, enhance decision-making, and build trust in insights by breaking down silos, improving performance visibility, accelerating innovation, and promoting data security. With these capabilities, leaders can better align resources, support student success, and stay resilient in a rapidly changing environment.

Driving institutional strategy with intelligent insights

Higher education leaders face mounting pressure to make faster, smarter decisions amid enrollment shifts, funding uncertainty, and workforce changes. These challenges ripple across budgets, staffing, and student services, while siloed systems often fragment financial, enrollment, and student success data, leaving leaders with outdated or incomplete insights.

Microsoft Fabric offers a unified foundation to turn institutional data into a source of agility and confidence. By connecting systems and applying predictive analytics, leaders can model scenarios, uncover insights, and act on opportunities such as:

• Tracking shifts in applications and yield rates to redirect outreach and boost enrollment.
• Identifying early signs of attrition and activating support to keep students on track.
• Modelling how changes in enrollment, aid, or scholarships affect financial outcomes.

By transforming data into actionable intelligence, institutions move from reacting to challenges to anticipating them. With AI-powered insights, leaders can automate outreach, streamline reporting, and coordinate action across departments to support student success and institutional resilience.

Like many other schools, Xavier College was grappling with a complex network of platforms and IT products, with its data scattered across 130 disparate systems. The College migrated all current and historic student and staff data to Microsoft Azure in under seven months, consolidating multiple systems and eliminating the need to manage data separately.

Key considerations for leaders: Are your financial and operational models rooted in historical data, or do they anticipate and shape strategy?

Governing and protecting data seamlessly

Colleges and universities manage sensitive information across student records, financial data, medical research, and intellectual property. Rising cyberthreats and evolving compliance requirements can put this sensitive data at risk while fragmented security tools overextend IT and security teams.

By protecting sensitive information and addressing risks quickly, institutions can safeguard research, teaching, and operations while maintaining trust and compliance. Strong data governance helps promote responsible information use, supporting innovation and collaboration without compromising security.

These measures help institutions protect valuable data and maintain trust with researchers and partners:

• Automate checks and reporting to improve audit readiness and reduce manual effort.
• Demonstrate robust data protection to secure grants and renewals.
• Monitor and respond to threats in real time, minimizing disruptions.

As part of Oregon State University’s (OSU) commitment to innovative security protocols, they continue to both deepen and expand their cybersecurity posture. They’re using Microsoft Security Copilot alongside Microsoft security tools with the goal of elevating their proactive security measures, allowing analysts to focus on tasks that add greater value to the institution.

Key considerations for leaders: Does your institution have unified visibility across all data systems, or are gaps still creating risk and stretching your teams thin?

Accelerating research breakthroughs

Research breakthroughs frequently require accurate, connected data that’s ready to power new insights. Critical information is often scattered across disconnected systems, which can make it difficult for faculty and researchers to collaborate efficiently or uncover patterns that drive innovation. In many cases, valuable time is spent cleaning and cross-checking data instead of focusing on discovery.

When institutions build a strong data foundation, they can discover new possibilities. Unified, well-governed data allows researchers to ask better questions, explore trends faster, and collaborate across disciplines while giving leaders a chance to gain predictive insights to drive breakthroughs.

When data is connected and trusted, AI can take research further by automating routine analysis, revealing new patterns, and suggesting fresh directions to explore. With the right foundation in place, faculty and students have an opportunity to spend less time managing information and more time advancing knowledge, securing funding, and driving the institution’s long-term growth.

Using Azure OpenAI, researchers at Georgia Tech were able to analyze unstructured data to better understand the charging experience of electric vehicle (EV) drivers. The volume of information was substantial, but it was estimated that human experts would require 99 weeks to extract the salient data points, which wasn’t realistic. Azure OpenAI was pivotal in advancing the research.

Key considerations for leaders: Are your research teams able to quickly connect datasets across disciplines, or are insights still fragmented and slowing discovery?

Unifying teams and data to support student success

Data empowerment helps institutions maximize innovation and value across operations, instruction, and systems:

• Simplify faculty and staff workflows – Unified data and automation can help streamline administrative work and empower educators. AI-powered tools are being used to improve efficiency and free up time for more strategic tasks. At the University of Waterloo, an AI assistant is helping students navigate job searches more efficiently and access support, contributing to a more streamlined experience that aligns with the university’s focus on student success.
• Engage learners and alumni – With a strong focus on student success and social mobility, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) is transforming higher education to meet the diverse needs of its students. By connecting siloed data and applying AI-powered tools, the university is streamlining processes and personalizing engagement across the student journey.

Becoming a data-empowered institution is a journey, not a destination. These five scenarios show how institutions can transform operations when data is unified, and AI is applied with purpose. The path to proactive leadership starts with unified data. Microsoft can help you move with confidence.

Download the Data-Empowered Institution e-book to see how leading institutions are putting these scenarios into action, and how your campus can take the next step.

Ready to learn more? Discover additional resources and tools to accelerate your data empowerment journey:

• Read the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study to see how leading organizations achieved 379% ROI with Microsoft Fabric, and how your institution can apply these insights to maximize the value of its data.
• Explore how Microsoft Fabric can help your institution securely unify data, enhance collaboration, and prepare your organization for the AI era.

The post Building data-empowered higher education institutions appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

With these advances in AI, institutions now have a powerful new opportunity: to use agents that can automate routine tasks, assist faculty and staff, and provide real-time, contextual insights to support teaching and learning. As more institutions begin their journey to this next frontier, AI agents will support individuals and teams by automating tasks and delivering instant, contextual insights.

This means that with data-focused AI tools from Microsoft, your institution can:

• Develop scalable, intelligent agents using Azure AI Foundry, trusted by enterprises and customized for higher education compliance and innovation.
• Turn data insights into action with AI-powered analytics, addressing challenges in student success, research productivity, and operational agility.

Accelerate agentic AI with Azure AI Foundry

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service empowers institutions to securely design, deploy, and scale agents with ease. Enhance your team’s efficiency with agents that simplify academic and operational workflows with robust security and trust features built in. This provides key tools and resources to help you:

• Create domain-specific agents to automate complex tasks.
• Use enterprise-grade identity for agents and built-in trustworthy AI.
• Deploy and scale agents quickly with managed infrastructure.

Create and scale domain-specific agents

With Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, your team can create domain-specific agents tailored to your unique needs. It helps you design, deploy, and scale agents that are ready for real-world use. This fully managed service handles infrastructure and orchestration. It includes ready-to-use templates, actions, and connectors for more than 1,400 enterprise data sources, including SharePoint, Microsoft Fabric, and third-party systems. For instance, you can design and deploy agents to help onboard new students with personalized guidance and support administrative teams with instant responses to common questions.

Institutions like Stanford Medicine are already using the healthcare agent orchestrator in Azure AI Foundry alongside Microsoft Copilot Studio. This integration enhances the efficiency of tumor board meetings through customized clinical workflows.

Secure and manage your agents

Creating agents is just the beginning—managing them responsibly plays a critical role in their effective use. With Microsoft Entra Agent ID, you can:

• Gain complete visibility and control over agents’ actions.
• Assign unique identities for each agent.
• Share identity management with your team members.
• Define access controls and permissions for each agent.

Trustworthy AI is a foundational commitment for Microsoft and for our customers. We’ve introduced new capabilities to help institutions discover, protect, and govern AI systems from the start.

On the security side, Azure AI Foundry integrates with Microsoft Defender for Cloud to provide real-time alerts and insights when threats arise. For compliance, out-of-the box integration with governance tools like Credo AI, Saidot, and Microsoft Purview, helps institutions monitor model performance, assess fairness, and track regulatory requirements.

By using Azure AI Foundry’s built-in tools for safety, security, and governance, institutions can design and deploy AI systems with greater reliability from the start.

Powering the next AI frontier with Microsoft Fabric

Strong data is foundational to effective AI. Microsoft Fabric helps unify your data to power analytics and agents—without the burden of managing complex infrastructure. As a SaaS solution, Fabric offers seamless integration of data tools and can reduce the need for manual service connections.

At its core is Microsoft OneLake, an open and unified data lake that supports any format, from any cloud. This flexibility allows developers to access and analyze all types of data efficiently.

Fabric also transforms how you manage and interact with data. With natural language capabilities, you can explore insights that drive student success, enhance research, and boost operational agility—empowering everyone to make informed, data-driven decisions.

Find the right data when you need it

Education leaders need tools that turn insights into action. That’s why we’re focused on making data more accessible through conversational experiences. With Copilot in Power BI, users can now ask questions in natural language and receive instant insights—no technical training needed to get started. Whether it’s enrollment trends, retention risks, or alumni giving, faculty and staff can explore data directly within Microsoft Teams to streamline their workflow.

Empower everyone to interact with their data

With enhanced interaction capabilities in Power BI and Copilot Studio, transforming data into actionable insights can now be faster and more intuitive. You can explore data through natural, conversational experiences, removing complexity, and making analysis more accessible. This shift empowers you and your teams to break down data silos and uncover valuable insights with ease. Power BI chat simplifies the exploration of complex datasets, offering quicker, more confident decision-making.

Uncover deeper insights with data agents

Finally, connecting Fabric data agents to Copilot Studio can help uncover deeper insights. These agents expertly analyze complex datasets, uncovering valuable insights from OneLake and driving informed action. By automating tasks like email sending and workflow triggering, they streamline your interactions with enterprise data, enabling confident decision-making.

Embrace the future of data-driven higher education with Microsoft Azure and Azure AI Foundry. Discover how innovative data agents and AI-powered insights can enhance your approach to learning and operations. Start your journey today and uncover the limitless possibilities that await you.

The post Discover the potential of agentic AI in higher education appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

Unlock the value of your data with Fabric

Fabric gives your teams the AI-powered tools they need for innovative data-informed decision-making and reporting projects. Fabric has many key features that help you get the most value from your organizational data.

With Fabric you can:

• Govern and protect seamlessly
• Bring your institution’s data together
• Empower everyone with access to valuable insights
• Fuel your AI innovation

Fabric not only enables innovation but also saves money. A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study commissioned by Microsoft in 2024 highlights the cost savings and financial benefits of Fabric:

• 379% return on investment
• Payback in less than 6 months
• 25% increase in data engineering productivity
• 90% reduction in data engineering time related to searching, integrating, and debugging

Learn how Fabric can provide additional data insights and contribute to cost savings.

Govern and protect your data

The effectiveness of your AI relies on responsibly managing and securing a wide range of data, including educational records, financial information, and research data. Schools need a unified solution to govern and protect their entire data estate while unlocking its full potential. Fabric, seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Purview, provides comprehensive data governance and protection. It simplifies management, secures sensitive information with role-based access controls, and ensures compliance with privacy regulations. By unifying governance and security, institutions can protect personally identifiable information (PII), prevent data loss, and share insights securely and compliantly.

Ensuring compliance is a pivotal step in becoming AI-ready. As you grow and expand your school’s AI innovation, it’s essential to design a strategy that strikes a balance between fueling paths to innovation and addressing pressing security priorities.

Auburn University turned to Microsoft and its comprehensive, flexible tools to develop approaches that would help them move forward and pivot as new technologies emerge. With tools like Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Sentinel providing security, Auburn developed more ways for people to explore AI’s possibilities safely.

Read more about how Auburn University is exploring new ways of using AI.

Additionally, Coquitlam School District faced challenges with data compliance and privacy, especially with unstructured data from teachers. To address these challenges, Coquitlam implemented Fabric and Microsoft Purview. These platforms transformed the district’s data management systems, turning unstructured data into actionable insights. Play this video to learn more about how Coquitlam School District’s achieved their goals around security and educational, operational, and organizational excellence.

Read Coquitlam’s full story and play the video to explore how this district is building a more secure infrastructure and enhancing data insights.

Bring your institution’s data together

Data management is most effective when it’s unified, governed, and compliant. As modern data platforms evolve with generative AI, the potential for data-driven decisions and operational optimizations grows. Fabric and OneLake unify your data and analytics to streamline transformation, deepen insights, and drive AI innovation. OneLake acts as a hub to build AI apps powered by your data, making it easy to virtualize and aggregate data from any source.

Fabric works with OneLake to centralize data, enabling seamless integration and improving data quality. Your institution can take your data from storage to Fabric and then to Azure AI Foundry portal, where you can build custom AI apps.

As your institution introduces dynamic data tools like Fabric and OneLake, you’ll be able to transition to an end-user, self-service model, empowering staff members to access the data they need when they need it, fostering a culture of data literacy.

The University of South Florida (USF) has accelerated data-driven decision-making by empowering its teams to access information and enriched business insights through a self-service approach. By preparing client technologists to do self-service analysis, USF has taken an important step on its ambitious digital transformation journey.

Read more about how USF is empowering employees to derive insights in minutes.

Empower everyone with access to valuable insights

Access to actionable insights is critical for driving meaningful change and improving decision-making across educational institutions. However, when data remains inaccessible to non-technical users, opportunities for innovation are often lost. Faculty and staff need intuitive tools to transform raw data into insights that support collaboration and institutional growth.

Fabric addresses these challenges by democratizing data access. Seamlessly integrated into Microsoft 365, it allows staff to create reports with drag-and-drop tools and leverage AI to uncover trends and opportunities. Securely connected and certified datasets ensure trusted insights, while centralized databases enable leaders to drive growth and support strategic initiatives.

Politecnico di Milano exemplifies this transformation by leveraging Microsoft Graph Data Connect and Power BI to uncover objective workforce sentiment insights that surpass the limitations of traditional surveys. By accessing near real-time sentiment data, organizations can make quicker, more informed decisions, fostering collaboration and creating supportive work environments—all while maintaining data privacy. This innovative approach highlights how modern tools can revolutionize data accessibility and empower institutions to derive actionable insights at scale.

Read more about how Politecnico di Milano is redefining data-driven collaboration and innovation.

Enhance your AI innovation

Leveraging generative AI streamlines productivity, improves quality, and increases value. Fabric, the data platform for the AI era, empowers your data professionals to unify data and build AI models on a single foundation. You can even use Copilot in Fabric to automate data insights, uncovering trends and enabling faster interventions. This improves everything from academic outcomes to resource management, all within a transparent and trustworthy AI platform.

Using machine learning to generate actionable insights has enabled Broward College to respond to students’ needs more quickly. The technology allows the team to process data in minutes that would previously take days to complete—and to isolate complicating or potentially misleading factors, like the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student retention.

Read more about how Broward College uses Microsoft data tools to identify and respond to students’ needs.

Fabric is more than a tool—it’s a powerful platform to unlock new possibilities. By centralizing and securing your data, you can drive better outcomes for students, faculty, and your entire educational community.

Ready to start innovating? Begin your data innovation journey and achieve cost-savings by signing up for a free 60-day Fabric trial.

Explore the “Make your data AI ready” training plan to master Microsoft Fabric. Learn to ingest, transform, and store data, and use Power BI to unlock insights for smarter decisions and better educational outcomes.

The post Microsoft Fabric: The data platform for the AI era appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

By leveraging Azure’s powerful tools, you can tackle today’s challenges and prepare for future success. Learn how Azure can help your IT team modernize confidently, prepare for future growth, and embrace AI integration within your educational institution.

Empower innovation with a highly secure cloud foundation

Azure helps educational institutions modernize and grow with scalable cloud solutions. With a $20 billion investment in cybersecurity, Microsoft provides robust protection, including customized hardware, integrated controls, and defenses against threats like DDoS. Supported by a global team of over 3,500 cybersecurity experts, these measures ensure that student data is secure. This allows institutions to focus on strategic goals and student success.

Azure enables efficient resource management and creates a secure, agile, and AI-ready foundation, so educators can prioritize delivering equitable learning experiences for all. Here are five ways Azure can help you transform student experiences at your educational institution and streamline operations.

1. Create personalized education experiences with AI

Azure OpenAI Service helps you transform educational experiences with AI tailored to the unique needs of your students, educators, faculty, and staff. With access to the latest AI models, like GPT-4, you can create private AI interactions for a wide range of applications like curriculum design, helpdesk efficiency, programs for advising students, and automating routine tasks.

Reimagine student experiences and streamline administrative tasks

AI can help you create intelligent experiences across your educational institution. Run Azure OpenAI Service on your data to gain insights and apply conversational AI to a variety of use cases to help your educators, faculty, and staff save time and work more efficiently. Building your own copilots allows you to chat with your data using natural language, generate and summarize content, and surface information from vast amounts of data. Specifically, you can: 

• Personalize experiences: Tailor academic content, support, or services to individual learners based on their behavior, preferences, and needs.
• Offer service and support assistants: Improve service interactions and administrative processes with quick assistance through self-service portals.
• Automate information discovery: Use AI to extract valuable insights and knowledge from large volumes of data, summarize results and insights, and generate content. 

Learn more about how educational institutions worldwide are using Azure OpenAI Service to transform experiences for students, educators, faculty, and staff.

The University of South Florida (USF) leveraged Microsoft AI solutions and Azure OpenAI Service to streamline their IT ticket classification process enabling rapid, automated ticket handling, faster response times, and satisfaction. This integration led to the swift development of AI-powered Help Desk chatbots, reducing workloads and improving efficiency.

National Taiwan Normal University utilized Azure OpenAI’s Davinci and ChatGPT to create 10 “CoolE” bots for the Cool English platform, each with a distinct personality tailored to different ages and proficiency levels. These bots engage students in scenarios like solving mysteries or exploring career insights, providing personalized learning experiences based on individual preferences and needs. This innovative approach enhances student engagement and personalizes learning experiences

IU International University of Applied Sciences leveraged the scalability, availability, and speed of the cloud to build Syntea, powered by Azure OpenAI Service. Syntea provides students with personalized, round-the-clock learning assistance that integrates seamlessly with platforms like myCampus and Microsoft Teams, delivering instant answers and personalized feedback. This AI study tool enhances learning efficiency, reducing course completion times by 27%, and exemplifies IU’s commitment to improving educational outcomes with advanced AI.

The South Australia Department for Education, in collaboration with Microsoft, used Azure AI Content Safety to secure EdChat, an educational chatbot, ensuring a safe digital learning environment by blocking harmful content. This integration allowed for a successful trial with 1,500 students and 150 teachers, demonstrating EdChat’s effectiveness in enhancing research and learning. The robust safety features enabled rapid deployment and increased student engagement, providing confidence for broader implementation.

2. Maximize the value of your data

Data is only as powerful as your educators’ and staff’s ability to use it. Azure’s modernized data analytics centralizes and manages data services, integrating disparate sources and breaking down departmental silos. This ensures secure, compliant, and accessible insights, enabling informed decision-making. Azure’s scalable solutions also alleviate the IT burden, empowering faculty and staff to focus on education and innovation.

With solutions like Microsoft Fabric, which centralize and manage data on a single, open governed foundation, you can unlock and share actionable insights across your institution. With data seamlessly flowing from Fabric, you simply describe what you need—including reports, summaries, and calculations—using conventional language, and Copilot in Fabric does the rest. You can also fuel your own tailor-made generative AI experiences in Azure AI Studio with curated data from Fabric.

USF uses Microsoft solutions to accelerate data-driven decision-making by empowering its teams to access information and enriched business insights through a self-service approach. USF freed its teams from repetitive manual tasks by connecting its information sources using Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft Power BI to reduce administrative work and produce reports in minutes.

3. Scalability and flexibility

Azure cloud solutions provide the scalability and flexibility schools need to accommodate growth while optimizing costs and operational efficiency. This helps IT professionals stay ahead of technological advancements and manage resources across datacenters, the edge, and multiple clouds. With this adaptability, institutions can prepare for future demands while managing costs.

Colorado State University (CSU) showcases the scalability and flexibility of Azure in modernizing their IT infrastructure. By migrating to Azure Stack HCI, CSU’s College of Business consolidated its on-premises environments into a unified ecosystem, improving the performance of SQL servers, printing systems, and remote desktop services. With Azure Stack HCI, primary and secondary (K12), and higher education institutions can easily streamline their operations, enhance efficiency, and ensure a scalable, flexible environment for students and staff.

4. Operational efficiency

With Azure, IT professionals can create reliable and secure systems that are performant with cloud and AI investments and leverage enablement support to help achieve operational efficiency. We know no two schools are alike, so whether you’re a small educational institution or a large university with many campuses, you can get customized support in three distinct ways:

• Comprehensive resources: Get easy access to cloud workload best practices, Microsoft Cloud adoption guidance, and Azure Migrate.
• Direct access to experts: Simplify your cloud journey with help from Microsoft experts and partners.
• Extensive coverage across scenarios: Find comprehensive coverage for cloud and AI adoption stages and workload scenarios to support your unique needs.

Using Azure services, Torrens University has leveraged generative AI to enhance its online learning experience, saving 20,000 hours and $2.4 million in time and resources. They have seen first-hand how Azure empowers educational institutions to achieve operational excellence and drive innovation.

5. Deliver secure access to services for students and staff, wherever they are

Cloud-based IT infrastructure, like Azure, ensures seamless access to educational resources through virtual desktops, while providing continuity and cyber resilience with backup and disaster recovery. These measures quickly restore normal operations, safeguard critical data, and maintain school operations during disruptions, protecting against data exposure, high recovery costs, and reputational damage. Azure solutions also support remote learning and work, enabling students and staff to access necessary tools from virtually anywhere, ensuring uninterrupted education.

Avans University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands uses Azure Virtual Desktop for remote exams, saving €150,000 annually and enhancing accessibility for all students and staff. Azure Virtual Desktop provides access to applications and resources in any environment with flexibility and control in a familiar computing experience that can be securely accessed on any device.

Take the next step

Azure is a key partner in educational transformation, offering tools and services to tackle today’s challenges and build a strong future. By leveraging Azure, educational institutions can drive innovation, improve efficiency, and ensure success for future generations.

Explore these resources to get started and learn how Azure can help shape the future of your educational institution. 

• Training for Azure | Microsoft Learn
• Fundamentals of Azure OpenAI Service – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Develop Generative AI solutions with Azure OpenAI Service – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Learn for Educators Program 
• Student Developer Resources – Microsoft Azure
• Microsoft AI Bootcamp for Educators – Azure AI Fundamentals 
• Prepare to teach AI-900 Microsoft Azure AI fundamentals in academic programs

The post 5 ways Microsoft Azure can reimagine student experiences and streamline operations appeared first on Microsoft Education Blog.

We believe today’s AI innovations will power a paradigm shift as big as mobile, cloud, web, or PC. That’s why we were excited to announce more than 100 new updates across every facet of the Microsoft technology portfolio—many of which will have a direct impact on education in the coming weeks, months and years. Industry experts highlighted everything from game-changing generative AI that can help save time and transform learning to new cybersecurity features that will help keep schools safe from the latest cyberattacks. 

With Microsoft Copilot I was able to near-instantly create an entire quarter-long, project-based learning assignment for fourth through eighth grades and simultaneously assign each of the Kansas standards that I had requested for every core subject.

Olivia Sumner, fourth through sixth grade teacher, Wichita Public Schools, U.S.

At first glance, many of these announcements may seem like science fiction, but the era of AI is bringing about these and many other transformational changes to education which will help personalize learning for students of various abilities and better prepare them for the future of work. 

A new era of AI has arrived

AI was everywhere in this year’s Ignite sessions including Satya Nadella’s opening keynote and over 100 sessions! Copilot was one of the standout product innovations from Microsoft this year and we’re excited about its potential in education. According to latest Work Trend Index research report, 70% of Copilot for Microsoft 365’s earliest users say that using generative AI at work has made them more productive, with 68% saying it improved the quality of their work and 77% saying that they didn’t want to give it up.  

• Copilot with commercial data protection for faculty (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) launched earlier this year powered by world-class GPT-4 model to save educators and staff time and unlock creativity. Educators in Wichita Public Schools are leveraging the power of AI in Copilot to save valuable hours during lesson planning and to personalize learning content for students of various abilities. Check out our AI for education hub to learn how AI can support personalized learning, automate daily tasks, and provide insights for data-driven decision making.   
• Copilot in Windows is the next step toward making Windows the destination for the best AI experiences. It empowers you to create faster and makes once complicated tasks simpler by using the power of AI to lessen cognitive load. Microsoft has made accessing the power of Copilot seamless as it’s always right there on the taskbar or with the Win+C keyboard shortcut providing assistance alongside other apps. These features are available in preview on the latest Windows devices—in the classroom, lecture hall or at home.  
• Microsoft Copilot Studio announced at Ignite, is a low-code tool to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build your own copilot experiences with Azure AI Studio. It brings together a set of powerful conversational capabilities including custom GPTs and generative AI plugins. IT can customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 with your own workloads—build, test, and publish standalone copilots and custom GPTs and manage and secure your customizations.  
• Microsoft has demonstrated its commitment to Responsible AI practices. In partnership with Code.org, this week we announced Minecraft Hour of Code: Generation AI. With resources to help educators run Hour of Code events in their schools and teach computer science, Hour of Code encourages all students to explore coding and responsible AI in the fun and engaging Minecraft world.  
• We announced numerous updates to Azure, including Microsoft Copilot for Azure—an AI companion for IT that simplifies day-to-day IT administration and helps IT teams unlock untapped Azure functionality.
• Another announcement, Azure AI Studio, is a unified platform to help organizations more easily explore, build, test and deploy AI apps. Finally, Azure OpenAI Service allows you to build your own Copilot and generative AI applications. To see how these developments are being used in education, read how a young inventor in UAE is building an AI Tutor with Microsoft’s AI capabilities including Azure OpenAI Service. 
• Learning Accelerators are AI-powered learning tools seamlessly integrated in Microsoft 365 Education to give individual students more opportunities to learn, practice, and receive specific coaching. Speaker Coach is a Learning Accelerator utilizing AI to give real-time pointers on pacing, pitch and filler words. Reading Progress leverages the power of Azure OpenAI Service to create personalized reading passages based on words or phonics rules that a class or specific student found most challenging. 

 Microsoft AI innovations are transforming how educators teach and students learn.

Unified and evolved cybersecurity tools

At Ignite, we also demonstrated our commitment to helping all organizations–including schools—keep their users and data secure. Considering more than 80% of malware attacks target the education sector, world-class cybersecurity solutions from Microsoft ensure that schools, districts, and ministries of education have the products and resources they need to establish and maintain a strong security posture. Microsoft technologies are built on trust. Moreover, we believe a school’s data is a school’s data—protected by the most comprehensive enterprise compliance and security controls—and is not used to train foundation AI models.   

• The future of security means both leveraging security tools built with AI and building features that help protect AI. At Ignite, Microsoft announced the next major step in this industry-defining vision: combining the power of leading solutions in security information and event management (SIEM), extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI for security into the first unified security operations platform.  
• All of the Microsoft 365 Education plans offer built-in management and cybersecurity tools to help protect against threats. Microsoft 365 A5 plan allows you to integrate more advanced cybersecurity measures that make it easy to guard, manage, and maximize learning and productivity for students, educators, and staff. Connect with an expert to find out which plan has the right protections for your institution. 
• Effective cybersecurity starts with knowledgeable leadership and educators. Enroll in the Protecting our Future course for leaders or the Building Cybersecurity Resilience course for educators on the Microsoft Learn Educator Center to implement CISA-recommended cybersecurity practices that foster awareness and preparedness, safeguard schools, and counter cyber threats effectively. 
• Students can continue learning with the Minecraft Education Cyber Collection. The collection contains resources for learners from first grade through high school and is aligned to both Cyber.org and CSTA standards, meeting the needs of most school systems for cybersecurity education. 

Thrive in a changing world

The ways in which our tools are helping to prepare the workforce of tomorrow took center stage at Ignite, where we introduced a host of updates, ranging from improvements in the Microsoft Cloud to enhancements in the essential learning and creation tools used by schools every day. 

 Microsoft Teams and our latest AI tools can help educators, students, and leaders thrive.

• Microsoft Teams enables effective collaboration and communication for more than 320 million users around the world and we’ve seen some amazing use cases in education. At Ignite, Microsoft has announced numerous AI-powered improvements to Microsoft Teams. As part of our continued efforts to provide updates and upgrades to the Microsoft Teams experience, the Teams for Education app has been re-designed on a foundation of speed, performance, and flexibility, and has now launched as the next evolution of Microsoft Teams—new Microsoft Teams for Education. To utilize these improvements, we recommend upgrading to new Teams as soon as possible.  
• In this new era of AI, we are redefining cloud infrastructure, from silicon to systems, to prepare for AI in every school and business, and in every app. Updates to Microsoft Azure mean that IT admins can use tools like Azure AI Studio to create low-code AI services to create innovative solutions in schools. 
• Microsoft Fabric revolutionizes data analytics for education, offering an integrated platform for streamlined processes and enhanced collaboration. With Microsoft Fabric, we are excited to explore unique education use cases to optimize student outcomes, modernize data management, and facilitate secure cross-campus research. 

If you weren’t able to attend live sessions, you can still watch many of them on-demand at Microsoft Ignite. You can also learn more about how Microsoft is bringing these exciting announcements to the classroom and the lecture hall at Microsoft Education or by signing up for a free online AI course using the Microsoft Learn Educator Center. 

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