Azerbaijan: How one Ministry found the right strategy, resources, and technology to quickly create online classrooms

As schools around the world respond to healthcare challenges, the need for remote learning tools has never been more urgent. To make the transition to distance learning more straightforward, the Government of Azerbaijan decided to close all educational institutions on March 3rd.

They evaluated several different solutions for remote learning to keep education ongoing.

As the best solution available, the Ministry of Education advised all higher education institutions to use Teams for remote learning and provided additional support. To make the transition to distance learning more accessible, Microsoft team in Azerbaijan, together with Bestcomp Group, Edumedia, and Innovative Technologies in Education, helped schools, educators, students, and their families as they navigate this new way of learning.

According to the Ministry, Microsoft Teams for Education, in comparison with competitive solutions, provides a holistic environment that allows content distribution, collaboration, live meetings, and assessments.

“Microsoft Teams is scalable to the needs of the educational system, and Microsoft’s local office and partner network support were available immediately,” – said Vusal Khanlarov, Head of ICT Bureau in the Ministry of Education.

Continuing to drive student engagement and focused learning can be a challenge, especially for those moving to remote learning for the first time. Educators need support to help make this work.

For K12 schools, Ministry in Azerbaijan launched Virtual School based on Teams, where students and educators can register and access educational content, assessments, and online classes immediately. They can find all e-books, video-lessons, additional education applications, and centralized testing. All such resources were integrated to bring together face-to-face connections, assignments, and conversations in a single hub.

Today, more than a million K12 students and 100.000 teachers have already been registered and actively using the platform. This project has been widely covered by local online and TV media to support educators who have created thousands of videos with the help of Teams for Education. Now, it is possible to evaluate the level of knowledge by using PowerBI tracking activities by each region and every school in Azerbaijan. At the same time, Virtual School became the largest online platform for cooperation and collaboration countrywide.

It is an excellent example of how one Ministry found the right strategy, resources, and technology to quickly create online classrooms that help students, teachers, and faculty find new ways to connect and learn.

Even more, 100.000+ users from 30 out of 50 universities and all vocational education institutions use Teams and decided to continue with Microsoft Teams as a learning platform.

Ministry of Education continues running the Virtual School project as an always-on platform, helping students stay engaged, and learning stays on track. At the same time, the Ministry uses Microsoft Teams for internal daily meetings.

Capabilities of Microsoft Teams, Forms, Minecraft Education Edition, and Stream will be used for centralized monitoring, content distribution, and flexible content amendments according to learning results

https://news.microsoft.com/en-cee/2020/07/09/azerbaijan-how-one-ministry-found-the-right-strategy-resources-and-technology-to-quickly-create-online-classrooms/

https://www.microsoft.com/