Microsoft Teams takes on the dreaded parent-teacher conference

New Parent Connection feature increases presence in Microsoft Teams Education.

Parent-teacher meetings may soon become even more interactive thanks to a new Microsoft Teams update.

The video conferencing service has announced work on Parent Connection, a new feature that will allow parents or guardians to communicate directly with educators through Microsoft Teams.

The company promises that the feature will allow parents and teachers to connect via chat, email or phone call, potentially ending uncomfortable after-hours school visits.

Microsoft Teams overhead connection

The official Microsoft 365 roadmap describes the new feature as letting teachers connect with their students’ guardians via chat, email or phone call “with a single click.”

The feature is still in development for now, but has a general availability release date of May 2022, so perhaps not too far away.

Microsoft says that, when it launches, Parent Connection will be available to Teams users around the world on its Education platform, as well as general users on the Web, desktop and mobile platforms.

Other than that, not much detail is available about the new feature, but Parent Connection seems likely to be the latest in a series of education-focused upgrades released for Microsoft Teams in recent months.

This includes a Classroom Insights tab that allows teachers to create analyses of how their students are performing, including average grades, on-time assignments, average return time, and conversation activity over time.

Using data from the Classroom Views tab, teachers using Teams now have one view to observe both individual student performance and class performance and can make more informed decisions about their curriculum, pacing, and student engagement.

In September 2021, Microsoft Teams also announced Reading Progress to, a new free tool that can help students improve their reading skills through practice, as well as enable teachers and tutors to better support students’ needs by offering in-depth analytics, helping their progress over time…

Source: tech radar