Enhance teaching and learning with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Review

My district is pushing AI tools, so I thought this would give me some concrete strategies. It did not. The prompt design section, where I hoped to find some substance, was particularly disappointing. It offers a few sample prompts like 'Create a lesson plan about the water cycle' and then calls it a day. There's no framework, no discussion of what makes one prompt better than another, just a series of screenshots showing a perfect output from a perfect input. This isn't training; it's a product demonstration you have to click through.

I spent an hour reading what amounts to a very long advertisement for Microsoft 365. The entire module is text-based. You read about Copilot, you look at pictures of Copilot, you read a sample prompt, you look at a picture of the output. There are no labs, no sandboxes, not even a suggestion to open a new tab and try it yourself. It's completely passive. You could replace the entire module with a five-minute YouTube video and lose absolutely nothing of value.

The knowledge check at the end was the final straw. The questions were things like 'Which of these is a benefit of using Copilot?' and the answers are lifted directly from the marketing copy I'd just scrolled past. It doesn't test understanding or application; it tests short-term recall of brochure text. If your institution requires you to get this badge for compliance, fine, click through it. Otherwise, your time is much better spent just using the actual tool.