Artificial Intelligence

Q&A: Microsoft Education’s CIO on the Role of AI in Education

Microsoft Copilot and generative artificial intelligence could have an impact on instruction, administration and more, says MJ Jabbour.

Suchi Rudra

Suchi Rudra is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC, and Vice, among other publications.

The potential use cases for generative artificial intelligence appear endless. As this tech tool continues to evolve, it has given university leaders and faculty members the potential to solve a broad spectrum of institutional and pedagogical challenges.

Microsoft Windows devices are at the forefront of this transformation, enabling schools to harness the power of AI effectively. The devices are optimized for AI-driven solutions such as Microsoft’s generative AI tool Copilot, offering enhanced performance, security and user experiences that are critical for modern classrooms and that enable faculty members to personalize learning, automate routine tasks and create more engaging, interactive lessons.

To find out more about how generative AI is already having an impact on higher education, EdTech: Focus on Higher Education spoke with MJ Jabbour, chief innovation officer for Microsoft Education, about Copilot. Jabbour, who previously served as CTO for the New York City Department of Education during a period that included the COVID-19 pandemic, currently focuses on speaking with the public about safe and effective uses for AI, building tools to help people work with AI, and researching the interactions between humans and AI.

EDTECH: What is Copilot?

JABBOUR: Copilot is your everyday AI companion. It’s a new user interface built with the latest AI advancements in large language models, combined with Microsoft AI models, search indexing and Microsoft Graph, and informed by local context and identity. It’s the unification and evolution of AI technologies that have been released to date across the Microsoft portfolio for a seamless, consistent and integrated experience.

EXPLORE: Integrate the latest Microsoft technologies into your higher education workflows.

EDTECH: How is it used in K–12 and higher education environments?

JABBOUR: When you’re looking at educational systems, it really breaks down into two major areas. One is the pedagogy, and the other is operations and administration. You’re going to see heavier Copilot use on the administration side to start and among the teaching staff at first. This is partly because, for instructors learning how to teach using AI tools and in partnership with AI, and from a digital citizenship standpoint, they need to ensure that students learn how to use these tools safely and effectively.

When we’re talking Copilot for Microsoft 365, it's an AI tool that’s woven inside of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other tools; those are for more specific use cases. For example, if I need to quickly generate a PowerPoint slide, I reference a Word document, and PowerPoint makes the presentation for me in less than a minute. When you’re looking at things like being able to do clear productivity tasks, then I think you already have a lot of really good use cases, particularly on the administrative and faculty side. When it comes down to higher-order thinking — Can you help me plan out this class? Can you help me build a rubric to assess performance? Can you help me build a test? — that is something you can do in Copilot today. But I would say that’s the very beginning of people being able to rely on these tools to get work done, teach, and support student engagement and learning.

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EDTECH: How do generative AI tools benefit instructors and students?

JABBOUR: The three main themes we see in education are accelerating learning, improving efficiency and preparing for the future.

You can think of accelerating learning as hyper-personalization at scale. You’ll see personalized learning, improving accessibility, engaging learners and analyzing data efficiently. Improving efficiency involves tasks such as creating and customizing content, enhancing support, unlocking productivity and automating certain processes. Preparing for the future requires building AI literacy and equipping students with skills in AI because the field is changing very quickly.

EDTECH: What are some of the ways faculty members can take advantage of AI in the classroom?

JABBOUR: One example is a tutor bot we created that teaches students both general and specific topics with increasing difficulty as they progress. Our team has tested and implemented this across various districts and universities, focusing mainly on middle school, high school and undergraduate programs. In one case, a high school student was repeatedly failing physics tests related to angular momentum, despite the bot’s attempts to teach the subject.

Then, something unexpected happened. The bot paused and said, “Hey, it looks like we’re having trouble. Can we talk about something not related to physics? What do you like to talk about?” The student mentioned their interest in space, and the bot engaged in a 15-minute dialogue about space exploration and topics like the rings of Saturn and planetary movement. After this conversation, the bot asked the student to retake the test on angular momentum, and the student scored 100%.

SECURE THE BOTS: Are your AI chatbots giving away more information than they should?

This experience was a master class for us in AI-enabled personalized teaching — something even the best human teachers strive for. But in a world where students don’t have infinite courage and teachers don’t have infinite time, it’s essential to consider how we can use technology to enhance education. Imagine if every student had access to this level of tailored learning for every topic. AI can make that possible.

Generative AI offers a real opportunity to reimagine education beyond tutor bots. It can create and customize lesson plans, quizzes and other educational content, enhance support services, automate administrative tasks and analyze data to provide actionable insights. By personalizing learning and supporting students’ unique needs, AI helps prepare them for the future while also lightening the load on educators.

EDTECH: How do colleges and universities need to prepare to use this technology?

JABBOUR: We’re building frameworks for prompt-a-thons — a unique method to teach people how to be good prompt writers — which will enable users to interact with Copilot safely and effectively. Those are “train the trainers” programs to help organizations deploy modernized digital citizenship and AI education to their stakeholders. The best tool is a prompt-a-thon, but the thing that teachers really need now is support from their communities to innovatively deploy this to their students.

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