Dear respected Eric Jensen3,
I went through your post carefully and I tried to simulate the test environment with a Microsoft 365 education tenant, where it seems like student accounts can be able to start the Speaker Progress. I tested on a Windows PC and also a Mac, with both Teams desktop app and Teams online. And it seems like I failed to reproduce the error. Below I attached some screenshots from my tests for you just now and kindly correct me if I made any misunderstanding to the scenario you and your students are facing.
In this situation, as you mentioned the same "We ran into a problem" error is happening across all students in your class and also multiple various devices like iPad, Mac, Edge browsers, if the same error will persist even on a new assignment for this class, I'm afraid this issue could be a temporary server-side issue or some related function launching cache in the class backend side, which both needs to be investigated through the remote section and collect error logs from backend to fix this for you and your students.
I suggest that you raise a free support ticket from the Microsoft 365 admin center and report the issue to the related team to get the proper and dedicated support. The support team there has more permission than us, they can help you remotely and collect logs to find out what exactly happened that caused the error and prevented Speaker Progress to start correctly. They may also involve more resources to investigate the issue from the backend. This would be the most efficient way to handle this case for you and your class. Reference: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn
Note: To create a support ticket, you must have Microsoft 365 admin privileges, and if you're not an admin for your Office 365 organization, contact the admin for creating a new ticket. Reference: How do I find my Microsoft 365 administrator? - Microsoft Support
Please accept my apologies and regret that I did not resolve the issue and redirected you to the related development team, but the solution to your concern can be found through the HAR logs and suggest that you raise a support ticket from the Office 365 admin center, where the related team will investigate the issue further by collecting the HAR logs.
We are redirecting it to the right support channel to solve the problem. That's why we suggest you contact your administrator or your IT department. They can create a support ticket. Once your administrator or IT contacts them, they will contact you back to start the help within 30mins.
I am sorry and apologize for it.
Your understanding and patience will be greatly appreciated. I hope you stay safe and healthy!
Sincerely,
Mia | Microsoft Community Moderator