Anthology Accelerates Innovation in Higher Education with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service

New AI enhancements unveiled at Anthology Together

Boca Raton, Fla., July 17, 2023 – Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced its future of incorporating generative AI capabilities into its ecosystem of EdTech solutions in collaboration with Microsoft.

By using Microsoft's advanced AI technologies with Anthology’s purpose-built suite of higher education solutions, Anthology is bringing forth new capabilities to help institutions personalise learning journeys, improve efficiencies and operations, and bolster recruitment and enrollment programmes.

Anthology selected Microsoft as its AI solution partner because of Microsoft’s vision and leadership in cloud AI developer services, long-standing relationship, and shared commitment to responsible AI by design. 

Leveraging the power of AI across its solution suite is a key differentiator for Anthology and core to its mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences™.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Microsoft to drive the next wave of innovation in education and open a world of possibilities for the global education community,” said JD White, Chief Product Officer at Anthology. “While other vendors might be looking at AI within a point solution, Anthology is assessing the power of generative AI technology across our vast stack of EdTech solutions. By thoughtfully integrating AI into our ecosystem, we can harness its power to foster innovation. The collaboration with Microsoft ensures these solutions are scalable, secure, and seamlessly integrated into existing educational ecosystems, making them easily accessible to institutions worldwide.”

“We’re excited about our collaboration with Anthology to power new AI solutions for education with a shared commitment to responsible use,” said Serena Sacks-Mandel, Global Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Education. “Anthology is a proven partner that has consistently demonstrated innovation and is aligned to our mission of empowering education through technology.”  

Anthology's collaboration with Microsoft represents a significant step forward in delivering state-of-the-art AI capabilities tailored to the unique needs of higher education institutions. By integrating Microsoft's AI features into Anthology's purpose-built higher education solutions, institutions can unlock new opportunities for personalised student engagement, advanced data analytics, and streamlined administrative processes. For example, using Microsoft's Natural Language Processing capabilities, institutions can gain deeper insights from unstructured data sources, such as student feedback, surveys, and communications, empowering administrators to make data-informed decisions to improve student success and satisfaction.

Anthology unveiled new real-world applications of AI capabilities today at Anthology Together within its Blackboard Learn learning management system that are using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, including:

• A course-builder aide for instructors that create draft modules, titles, descriptions, etc. The integration of Azure OpenAI Service will enable instructors to streamline content creation processes, saving valuable time and effort. 
• Content-based test generation. AI-powered algorithms analyse a document's content and quickly generate a diverse set of questions. This allows educators to allocate more time to other important tasks, such as lesson planning and individual student support.
• Rubric creation. Rubric creation powered by AI streamlines the rubric creation process and ensures consistency and fairness in evaluating student performance. Educators will have the ability to customise and fine-tune these AI-generated rubrics according to specific learning objectives and assessment criteria, providing a balance between automation and instructor expertise.

These features are built following Anthology's commitment to responsible AI use, ensuring that human judgment and ethical considerations always guide AI-facilitated decision-making and to use AI as a tool to enable positive outcomes while respecting privacy, fairness, and transparency. Learn more about Anthology’s approach to ethical and responsible AI use. 

Anthology uses Azure for cloud services and the Microsoft Power Platform for business intelligence solutions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the foundation of its customer relationship management (CRM), Anthology® Reach, and Finance and Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, which will allow Anthology to use Dynamics 365 Copilot features to accelerate innovation. Anthology also harnesses the power of Microsoft 365’s collaboration and productivity tools within many products, including its learning management system (LMS), Blackboard® Learn.

Microsoft awarded Anthology the Microsoft Business Applications Inner Circle award in 2022/2023 and 2021/2022. The award recognises Outstanding Achievements in EdTech and Anthology's rank in the echelon of Microsoft's Business Applications global network of partners.

About Anthology

Anthology offers the largest EdTech ecosystem on a global scale for education, supporting more than 150 million users in 80 countries. With a mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences™, we help learners, leaders and educators achieve their goals by offering over 60 SaaS products and services designed to advance learning. Discover more about how we are fulfilling our mission for education, business and government institutions at www.anthology.com.