The Shelly Cashman Series Collection, Microsoft 365 & Office, 2021 resource is comprehensive and offers enough material that the Business Office Specialist class (BOS) could be a year-long course. There are even resources that support some of the Digital Literacy standards. It would take a very dedicated educator quite a while to learn the program because it is full of material. We liked that the instructor can upload original content and that the program is compatible with many of the most widely used learning management systems. One feature that we weren't able to confirm is if the instructor can differentiate requirements for individual students. This is something we looked for but were not able to find. We also searched the Help menu for information about differentiating assessment requirements for individual students, but nothing came up. There is a feature where the instructor can edit assignments: hide them from view, modify due dates, rename, and move individual assignments and modules in a different order, but that was for group instruction.

There are 72 additional resources that support career readiness and Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certification in Word (associate and expert), Excel (associate and expert), PowerPoint (associate), Access (expert), and Outlook (associate). Since the aim of the BOS class is industry certification, this feature is beneficial.

The program follows a consistent sequence that will help students become familiar with the process. There are Skills Assessment Manager (SAM) 365/2021 Capstone Projects at the end of each module, a web-based application that teaches fundamental computer concepts in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. SAM requirements include Windows 10 or later: Microsoft 365 Subscription or Microsoft Office 2021 Home, Premium, or University; and macOS 10.14 or later: Microsoft 365 Home/Premium subscription or Microsoft Office 2021 Home/Student. The SAM projects have files that must be downloaded, including the instruction file, the project file (the document that is to be modified), and support files. The instructions are typically several pages long and have an example of what the completed assignment should look like when complete. However, unless the student has a dual monitor, they will have to split their screen to view the instructions and working document, print them, or minimize and maximize the instructions with each step. This is a big negative in our opinion.

We didn't come across instructions on how to teach the material or suggested ways to include family (Pedagogy > Instructional Support); however, if an educator needs the publisher's help on how to teach the content they are trained on, then there is a much bigger problem. The lack of publisher advice on how to teach the content and involve family is not a problem, in our opinion.

We did not see an option to change the language delivery, which might be a problem for some school districts.

Overall, The Shelly Cashman Series Collection, Microsoft 365 & Office, 2021 would be a valuable resource for the BOS class. It would require time to go through all of the content, and unless it is a year-long course, there is more material than time to use it all. Because we are not tech support and did not have to install the program on a device, we cannot attest to the ease of installation, but we can't imagine it being too difficult as the program is web-based. We did not see anything that would identify if updates are pushed automatically. Still, again, it is web-based, so we assume that all updates are done automatically without tedious and time-consuming updates on individual machines.