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April 25, 2024

The University of South Florida drives innovation and acceleration with Microsoft Copilot

The University of South Florida (USF), known for fostering innovation and student success, recognized the potential of AI to transform its academic and operational efficiency but faced challenges in its adoption across its campuses. This challenge underscored the need for a strategic approach that would not only address uncertainties but also foster an environment of innovation. 

In response, USF initiated a phased integration of Al tools into their workflows, focusing on fostering a culture of experimentation, education, and continuous feedback. This strategic approach aims to dispel fears, clear up misconceptions, and upskill the university community, preparing them for a more efficient future.

University of South Florida

To implement this transformation, USF partnered with Microsoft to implement Microsoft Copilot. USF set its sights on advancing efficiency and creativity, and Copilot aligned with their ethos of using technology to enhance academic and research productivity. 

“We want our faculty to do groundbreaking research, and we want our students to be successful,” says Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology at USF, Sidney Fernandes. “Using technology as an accelerator is built into our DNA. And our goal with these new technologies is to responsibly allow our faculty, staff, and students to be more efficient but also much more creative.”

The implementation of Copilot for Microsoft 365 marked a significant leap in realizing this vision. The integration of Copilot enabled faculty and staff to explore how AI can seamlessly navigate and interact with their documents across tools like OneDrive, effortlessly generating summaries, crafting presentations, and analyzing data within minutes. Copilot can reduce time and task barriers but also unlock new avenues for innovation and creativity, allowing the USF community to channel their energies into more meaningful and impactful work.

“Our staff and faculty were able to play with the tools, make mistakes, and be bold,” says Angela Sklenka, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer at USF. “In our environment, we really emphasize that it's okay to try new things and focus on what matters most.”

Granting creative license for AI exploration

To enhance operational efficiencies, USF partnered with Microsoft, a trusted partner, to ease faculty and staff into a new digital era. This collaboration led to the launch of Copilot for Microsoft 365, designed to elevate the everyday efficiency of USF’s academic and administrative staff.  By integrating Copilot into their daily routines, faculty and staff found a powerful assistant within familiar Microsoft tools. Copilot works within the tools they were already using to deliver increased productivity and creativity while setting users free from repetitive tasks so they can focus less on the tools and more on the work that matters most. 

USF started by putting out a call for proposals for a limited release of 150 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses to see how faculty and staff imagined using it. Within three days, USF’s IT department received 500 license requests from a variety of departments. 

With the licenses activated, USF staff members were able to open Microsoft software, such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams, or Word, and use the embedded functionality of Copilot to instantly answer questions, organize thoughts, research specific topics, enhance messaging, and aid communication and collaboration across the university. This saved staff time by creating efficiencies around administrative tasks and allowed them to focus their executive thoughts on the things that matter most.

Defending data while driving disruption

With their emphasis on research and teaching, USF prioritized exploring data protection and governance aspects of using generative AI. The need for industry-leading security was yet another reason the institution adopted Microsoft tools. With commercial data protection, a user’s prompts and responses are not saved when Copilot is closed. Microsoft has no “eyes-on” access to data included in a prompt, and no interactions are used to train the underlying model. Utilizing Copilot with commercial data protection while working closely with Microsoft alleviated any concerns that faculty and staff may have had. They were able to use AI in ways that they had never imagined while knowing vital data and intellectual property were protected. 

“Any Research 1 university is going to be concerned whether its data is protected and used in a way that the agencies who trust us with doing this research feel comfortable,” says Fernandes. “Copilot with commercial data protection allows us to have that level of comfort while also allowing the faculty and staff to be creative.”

Putting the “flow” in workflows

After implementing Copilot for Microsoft 365 in faculty and staff workflows, USF immediately began seeing results. Before adopting Copilot, it took USF weeks to make policy revisions or any continuous process improvement plans. Now, with Copilot in place, fewer people are required to work on a project, and tasks may only take a few hours to complete rather than days or weeks. Copilot for Microsoft 365 alleviates the burden of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so faculty and staff can spend this time creatively solving problems, conducting critical research, establishing stronger relationships with peers and students, and using their expertise to forge new, innovative paths for USF. 

Tim Henkel is Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at USF and Director of USF’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. He has been using Copilot for Microsoft 365 to interact more efficiently with his OneDrive files, such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents. Now, he can easily query his documents, extract essential information, ask for summaries, create images for newsletters and presentations, and even help with his ideation process. When using Teams, Copilot helps Henkel to be more present in his meetings, knowing that Copilot will provide transcripts, bullet-points, and action items.

“I can invest more time in people now that I don't have to worry about those recurring repetitive tasks because people are what it's all about,” Henkel says. “It is revolutionizing all our workflows, our teaching, and our learning spaces quite rapidly. With Copilot, we're able to do things bigger, better, but also equitably across the university space. It’s changing the way we do everything, and that is a big deal.” 

Helping the Help Desk

Microsoft AI solutions are allowing USF’s IT department to accelerate and customize their solution development process with bots utilizing Azure OpenAI Service capabilities. USF’s IT ticket classification process required a great deal of human time and resources. With Azure OpenAI, USF can now rapidly classify and summarize tickets, eliminating that first level of eyes on an issue. By integrating AI tools, the IT support teams can respond to user queries or issues more quickly and effectively. Following this integration, the USF IT department successfully developed and launched its first AI-powered Help Desk integration in just one week.

Universities like USF must work within a variety of rules—such as grant rules, state rules, and federal rules—which can create many questions for staff to field. Using Azure OpenAI combined with the university’s existing documentation, USF rapidly deployed two chatbots. The USF Travel Chatbot answers complex questions and reduces overall frustration when staff and faculty are traveling. In addition, USF has a technology bot so that students can get answers to their technology questions, further reducing help desk time. 

“With AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot and Azure OpenAI, we've been able to give our staff and faculty a starter kit for how to create an app with just a bit of training and guidelines,” says Fernandes. “Now we can tell other departments, ‘Go out and create something yourself that meets your specific needs and achieves your specific goals.’”   

Preparing the generative AI generation

USF has plans to enable employees to incorporate Copilot for Microsoft 365 into daily workflows. In meetings, for instance, Copilot acts as an ally for instant summaries of key points and topics in real time. Faculty and staff are also learning that Copilot can act as a thought partner during research—an assistant that makes problem-solving more efficient—helping them to question the results they are given and hone critical discernment based on their expertise. This highly iterative process makes generative AI as effective as possible for USF.

“I've always been passionate about speed to value, and Copilot allows us to show value very quickly,” says Fernandes. “It’s wonderful to be a CIO and say ‘yes’ to more things, as clients now have the power to do things themselves. And for us IT folks, we can focus on important tasks such as curating data, not on having to create reports.” 

Henkel views Copilot as nothing short of a game changer, forever altering the way that USF faculty teaches and how their students learn. 

“It’s moving us faster into the things we care about, which is thinking, right?” he says. “That's what higher ed is: a place for critical thinking and problem-solving. Copilot can handle the basics, such as writing style and mechanics, so we can grapple with the thinking and the evidence we use for arguments. That's where the real learning comes in.”   

In terms of the student experience, Copilot is already helping students learn more efficiently and comprehensively. Since AI is the future of work, USF is offering students invaluable exposure to these tools by incorporating them into the learning environment.

“Part of our mission as a university is to prepare students for what lies ahead,” says Fernandes. “Students graduating in a year will be walking into industries heavily leveraging generative AI. And through our partnership with Microsoft, we’re giving them a leg up to do amazing things with AI as part of tomorrow’s workforce.”

Microsoft Copilot is changing workflows across USF campuses. Educators and researchers can do more work in less time, so they can build new projects and stronger student relationships. Students can access services faster, enhance learning while developing sharper critical thinking skills, enjoy more equitable access to advanced tools, and better prepare for a quickly evolving post-graduation job market. While resources remain the same, USF can accomplish significantly more now with Copilot, alleviating time spent on administrative tasks while making the possibilities of learning acceleration seem limitless.

“We want our faculty to do groundbreaking research, and we want our students to be successful. Using technology as an accelerator is built into our DNA. And our goal with these new technologies is to responsibly allow our faculty, staff, and students to be more efficient but also much more creative.”

Sidney Fernandes, Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology, University of South Florida

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