Instructions Enhancement in Microsoft Teams Assignments is a tool that helps educators quickly improve and refine assignment instructions using generative AI. Instead of writing detailed instructions from scratch, educators can start with a brief outline and use AI-powered enhancements to add detail, structure, hints, learning objectives, and standards alignment. Instructions Enhancement is designed to save time, increase instructional clarity, and help educators deliver accessible, well-structured assignments for all students.
What can Instructions Enhancement do?
Instructions Enhancement provides educators with AI-powered tools to refine and improve assignment instructions. Key features include:
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Add Detail — Expand brief instructions by elaborating on the concepts and expectations outlined in the assignment.
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Add Sparkle — Add emojis to highlight key concepts and steps, making instructions more visually engaging for students.
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Add Hints — Insert helpful hints that guide students toward understanding without giving away the answer.
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Add Steps — Break instructions into a clear, numbered sequence of student-friendly steps that follow the original task.
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Add Learning Objectives — Generate clear, observable learning objectives aligned to the assignment's content and grade level.
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Align to Standards — Update instructions to meaningfully reflect the intent of a selected academic standard while preserving the original lesson context.
Inputs and how each feature works
Each enhancement uses the educator's existing assignment context—including assignment title, instructions, grade level, class name, and module information (if available in Teams)—as input. Below is a summary of what each feature does:
Add Detail
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, and class context.
What it does: The tool expands the current instructions by elaborating on concepts and expectations. It adds depth to the assignment description while keeping the content aligned to the original intent and appropriate for the specified grade level.
Add Sparkle
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, and class context.
What it does: The tool enhances the current instructions by adding emojis to highlight key concepts, steps, and important terms. This makes instructions more visually engaging and easier for students to scan, while preserving the original meaning.
Add Hints
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, and class context.
What it does: The tool generates helpful, student-facing hints that guide learners toward understanding the assignment without revealing the answer. Hints are written at the appropriate grade level and reference the concepts in the original instructions.
Add Steps
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, and class context.
What it does: The tool converts the existing instructions into a clear, numbered list of student-friendly steps. Steps follow the original task exactly and are written in language appropriate for the specified grade level, helping students understand the sequence and expectations at a glance.
Add Learning Objectives
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, and class context.
What it does: The tool generates clear, student-friendly learning objective statements that describe what students should be able to do or demonstrate after completing the assignment. Objectives use concrete, observable action verbs appropriate to the grade level and stay tightly aligned to the assignment content—they do not introduce new goals.
Align to Standards
Input: Assignment title, existing instructions, grade level, class context, and one or more selected academic standards.
What it does: The tool updates the assignment instructions to meaningfully reflect the intent of the selected standard(s)—what students should know and be able to do—without copying the standard text verbatim. The original lesson context and assignment topic are preserved while the action, content, and cognitive skill implied by the standard are incorporated.
What is Instructions Enhancement intended for?
Instructions Enhancement is intended for educator-in-the-loop use, where the feature is available only to educators and teachers. The educator must review and approve all generated content before it is saved and shown to students. The feature always uses educator-provided input as the basis for any content it generates.
Instructions Enhancement helps educators:
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Save time when creating or refining assignment instructions
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Improve instructional clarity and student understanding
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Scaffold assignments for different learning needs
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Align existing assignments to curriculum standards
What are the limitations of Instructions Enhancement?
Instructions Enhancement is not grounded in factual knowledge beyond what an educator provides. While it writes in fluent, grammatically correct language, the content it generates can be inaccurate or inappropriate. Educators must validate and review all enhanced instructions to ensure accuracy and relevance.
The feature requires a minimum of 50 characters of existing instructions to generate enhancements, ensuring there is enough context for meaningful output.
How to minimize limitations:
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Provide clear, detailed input — Start with a well-defined assignment title and instructions that clearly describe the task. The more context you provide, the more relevant the enhanced output will be.
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Always review and validate — Review all enhanced instructions to confirm accuracy, relevance, and alignment with the specific needs of your classroom and lesson before saving.
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Avoid over-reliance on AI — Use Instructions Enhancement as a complement to your expertise, not a replacement. Treat generated content as a starting point for further refinement.
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Be mindful of subject limitations — The system may perform less effectively with highly technical, numeric, or science-focused content. Review these outputs with extra care.
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Check grade-level appropriateness — While the system targets the specified grade level using readability measures, always verify that the language and complexity are appropriate for your students.
Operational factors for effective and responsible use
Effective and responsible use of Instructions Enhancement requires thoughtful implementation and careful configuration. Key considerations include:
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Clear and detailed inputs — Provide a descriptive assignment title and detailed instructions (at least 50 characters) to guide the AI in generating contextually relevant enhancements.
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Educator review and validation — Always review and validate AI-enhanced content to confirm accuracy, relevance, and alignment with the specific needs of the classroom and lesson. AI-generated content is presented for educator approval before it is saved.
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Grade-level alignment — The system uses readability measures (targeted to the specified grade level) to produce age-appropriate output. Verify that the language complexity matches your students' needs.
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Content type awareness — Recognize the system's limitations with numeric or highly technical/science-focused content and review these outputs with extra care.
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Educator training — Provide educators with guidance on how to write effective input and interpret AI-generated outputs. Share best practices for integrating enhanced instructions into teaching strategies.
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Feedback mechanisms — Use the built-in thumbs up/thumbs down feedback and the "What went wrong?" dialog to report issues and help improve the system over time.
Supported languages
In general, Instructions Enhancement supports the following validated language output: en-US, fr-FR, fr-CA, de-DE, it-IT, es-ES, pt-BR, nl-NL, pl-PL, sv-SE, ja-JP.
The system automatically detects the language of the educator's input and generates enhanced content in that same language. When a Teams locale is available, the system may use it as a fallback to resolve the correct regional variant. Other languages may work but have not been specifically validated or evaluated, and only the languages listed above are officially supported.
The system hasn't been specifically evaluated for the wide variety of dialects and sociolects represented in English.
Generative AI models are trained using vast amounts of data, and that data is most often in English. This can sometimes result in better performance in English as compared to non-English languages. As with any deployment of generative AI models, we encourage users to be mindful of the limitations of these systems for their specific use case, and cultural and linguistic contexts.
Microsoft is planning to add more supported languages and locales to Instructions Enhancement. This article will be updated as additional languages are supported.
System evaluation
Instructions Enhancement is evaluated through extensive manual and automated testing, including custom datasets for offensive and malicious prompts and responses. The system is continuously evaluated with user feedback through the built-in thumbs up/thumbs down mechanism and the "What went wrong?" dialog, which collects structured feedback on specific issues.
What should I do if I see unexpected or offensive output?
If you see unexpected or offensive outputs, please submit feedback using the thumbs down button in the Instructions Enhancement interface. You can also use the "What went wrong?" dialog to provide additional detail about the issue. Microsoft takes this challenge seriously and is committed to improving safeguards.
Access and licensing
Instructions Enhancement is available only to educators with a Microsoft 365 license. The feature is automatically limited to educators and is not accessible to students or users without the required license and role.
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