Dan, Qaixen Consultant, reveals how the Education sector can obtain the most value of their investment in Microsoft 365 in his latest blog:
Many things have changed in the education sector since the pandemic. For good or bad, these changes will forever be ingrained within education systems around the world. As the UK announced on 20 March 2020 it would be shutting schools for the foreseeable future, the race to work out how to educate millions of children online began. Many staff within the education sector had never heard of Microsoft Teams, let alone SharePoint, so this mammoth task fell upon the Computing leads, IT subject leaders and the Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) at schools across the country. Their mission: to create and execute a plan to educate the masses within a matter of days.
The situation in the education sector today
Fast forward to 2022, and a lot has changed from the early days of 2020. Many schools, colleges and universities have adopted home learning into their policies and planning around remote teaching is now easier than ever. However, due to the rush to rapidly push out remote learning access, numerous skills and opportunities for training were missed along the way. Although many schools have done a fantastic job integrating Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and other cloud-based learning platforms into their education plan, most remain unaware how to get the most value from these powerful tools. It is astonishing what can be missed if the knowledge of what is actually available to you is unknown.
At the start of lockdown, at one particular school, the SLT were struggling to manage the amount of communication taking place between members of staff. As a result, approvals for letters, budgets and communications were difficult to keep up with. In a business setting, these types of approval systems are already in place, however, in an education setting there typically isn’t any experience of this new way of working. Up until 2020 for most schools, “Teams” were something you group students into before taking part in a P.E. lesson. The SLT at this school in question was completely unaware of the Microsoft Approvals App and how it could be used to effectively manage approvals across the school. By recommending the introduction of Microsoft Approvals, the SLT were able to quickly organise and confidently implement a secure approvals process.
Harness the power of Microsoft 365
The education sector has only just scratched the surface regarding the power of Microsoft 365. Here at Qaixen, we are finding that many schools are completely unaware of what is available for free.
To those of us who are more familiar with the world of cloud technology, this could seem almost trivial. However, this is a big deal for the education sector. Time is a huge commodity and any tools that can save time and effort, while enabling teachers to focus on what is important: education. Educators shine at learning and applying skills but if they are not aware of what is available to them, then they can only do so much.
If you would like to learn more about how Qaixen can help your school, college or university to achieve more with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 tools, simply contact us. We also offer a range of Microsoft 365 training services to help drive adoption and increase awareness of all the available tools in the Microsoft 365 stack to enhance teaching and learning through technology.