Education Scotland stresses there is a ‘manual workaround’
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A technical problem with the Microsoft Teams platform that is causing issues with Scotland’s Glow digital learning platform is still “weeks away” from being fully fixed.
With all learning being conducted remotely as of this week, pupils across Scotland were asked to log on to the nationwide Glow system – which is based on Microsoft’s Teams software. However, many children and schools reported problems with accessing the platform. Others that did log on to found that it ran slowly.
These issues were reportedly fixed earlier this week, with Scottish Government education secretary claiming that Microsoft had now “addressed these issues to our satisfaction”.
However, other Teams-related problems with the Glow platform remain, according to an update published on Tuesday by government body Education Scotland.
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“We have continued to work with the Microsoft technical team to resolve the intermittent fault with the join button which has impacted a small number of users,” it said. “We can confirm that Microsoft are a few weeks away from implementing a permanent fix for this. In the meantime, please continue to use the manual workaround and where we can expedite any work we will do so.”
The update added: “As soon as a confirmed fix date for the technical fault is available, we will update the status page.”
In addition to the issue with the Join function, Education Scotland said that it “had received a small number of reports of delays within the chat function during some meetings”.
“Microsoft are investigating ways to improve the user experience however it is working as designed,” it said. “There are changes to operational use which can be implemented by our users to help improve their experience. Should anyone need assistance with this please contact the helpdesk for further information.”
Iain Gray, a Labour member of the Scottish Parliament, questioned whether there had been a sufficient “stress test” of Education Scotland’s IT infrastructure before the wide-scale launch of remote learning.
