Case Studies
Creating a Friction-Free Microsoft 365 Experience for Staff and Students
Brighton Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College (BHASVIC) is among the top-ranked schools and colleges nationally, and needed more than access to Microsoft 365. It needed a structured, secure environment that staff and students could rely on every day, without adding a full-time job to someone’s workload.
By automating access management and building a culture of resources shared by design across SharePoint and Teams, BHASVIC has created a digital learning experience that feels clearer, calmer and more sustainable for its almost 4,000 students and 380 staff who depend on it.
BHASVIC Builds on Existing Success
Among the top-ranked schools and colleges nationally, BHASVIC already had a strong reputation for innovation, outstanding teaching and student success. But as digital learning became increasingly important, staff recognised that the systems supporting teaching and learning needed to evolve too.
The direction was obvious. Microsoft 365 offered the tools BHASVIC wanted to build a more connected and consistent student experience. Translating that ambition into a secure, sustainable reality was the harder part.
"Moving to Microsoft seemed such an insurmountable problem. We didn't know where to start. We thought - we don't have the time, do we hire someone? How would we maintain it?"
-Julia Holgate Turner, Learning Technologist, BHASVIC
The Challenge
Staff and students were split across a fragmented VLE and Microsoft Teams, with no single place anyone could rely on. Consolidating into a proper Microsoft 365 environment, built on Teams and SharePoint, was the obvious answer. But it brought a new set of problems BHASVIC didn’t have the internal capacity to solve alone.
Who gets access to what. How that access stays correct as classes and timetables change throughout the year. Who maintains all of it once it’s built. For Julia and her colleagues, it was this challenge of managing access to resources, more than anything else, that felt insurmountable.
The Approach
BHASVIC partnered with Cloud Design Box to build a structured Microsoft 365 environment around two things that mattered most to the college: automated access management and a culture of resources shared by design.
Access is now handled overnight through a sync with BHASVIC’s Management Information System, so staff and students end up in the right Teams and resource areas without anyone manually managing it. Materials created in the staff area of a subject site are automatically available to colleagues, allowing departments to build shared resource banks rather than starting from scratch each time.
Subject Sites became the “front door” for each subject, a consistent, predictable place where students always know resources can be found. The automatic creation and management of class Teams, alongside centrally managed permissions, keeps sensitive information protected without anyone having to deal with it manually.
“We saw Cloud Design Box and grabbed it with both hands. The team has identified a need within education and gone out of their way to meet that need.”
— Julia Holgate Turner, Learning Technologist, BHASVIC
The Impact
Taking away the administrative burden of access management freed Julia and her team to focus on how staff and students actually use the platform, rather than how it’s held together.
Students spend less time figuring out where things are, with fewer dead ends before they can start their actual work.
“Students are more organised as it’s streamlined their experience by reducing the cognitive load of figuring out where things are.”
Staff have moved from working privately to building something that lasts.
“Staff can build up a wonderful entire subject’s worth of resources for their students that never goes away and is always there.”
The Additional Learning Support team finds it easier to support students with additional needs, because resources are consistently located rather than scattered. The wider college now runs on one system for both communication and teaching, and can switch to fully remote teaching at short notice, something BHASVIC has had to do during exam periods. Leadership also has more visibility into assignment activity through Cloud Design Box’s Assignment Analytics, recently updated with student-level submission data that supports both auditing and pastoral conversations.
With strong foundations now in place, BHASVIC is looking ahead: exploring Assignment Analytics in more depth to support student success, making better use of SharePoint for staff and student communication, and continuing training and adoption to help everyone get more from the tools already available.
“Your support team are absolutely amazing… they go the extra mile, they do their research, they test things thoroughly… they’re just so knowledgeable and so, so helpful.”
— Julia Holgate Turner, Learning Technologist, BHASVIC
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