Microsoft launches Bing Chat Enterprise for education professionals

Faculty can chat with an AI assistant to help them with content creation, while students can improve their information literacy with smart feedback.

(Image: Microsoft)

Listen to this article

00:00

1x 1.5x 1.8x

Microsoft has announced two new features to enhance the search experience for education users: Bing Chat Enterprise and Search Progress.

Bing Chat Enterprise is a preview feature that allows faculty users of Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 to chat with an AI-powered assistant, while Search Progress is a learning accelerator that helps students develop information literacy skills by tracking their search behavior and providing feedback. Here’s everything you need to know.

Bing Chat Enterprise

Bing Chat Enterprise is designed to help educators, staff, and researchers save time and energy by using generative AI to assist them with various tasks, such as writing, rewriting, improving, or optimising their content. Unlike Bing Chat, which is available to anyone on the web, Bing Chat Enterprise is exclusive to Microsoft 365 education users and requires a sign-in with a Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory).

Microsoft aims for Bing Chat Enterprise to be used in drafting content, summarising PDFs on Edge, content creations, and brainstorming. Bing Chat Enterprise also offers commercial data protection, which means that user and chat data will not be leaked, saved, accessed, or used by Microsoft or anyone else.

Faculty users can access Bing Chat Enterprise from bing.com/chat or the Microsoft Edge sidebar. It’s available for IT admins licensed for Microsoft 365 A3 or A5, who can enable or opt out of the feature for their faculty. The feature will be enabled by default for eligible users no earlier than September 21. Do note that the feature is only available for faculty — students can continue using the regular version of Bing Chat on Edge.

Also read | 5 new WhatsApp features every user should know

Search Progress

Search Progress is another feature and is designed for both students and educators. It aims to improve the search experience for education users, especially students. Search Progress is a learning accelerator that monitors the student’s search behaviour and provides feedback on how to improve their information literacy skills.

According to Microsoft, information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and use information effectively and ethically. Search Progress helps students develop this skill by showing them how to refine their queries, filter their results, cite their sources, and avoid plagiarism.

Story continues below this ad

Search Progress is available for all Microsoft 365 education users and can be accessed from bing.com/education or the Microsoft Edge sidebar.

Tags:
microsoft