Google Classroom Could Bridge a Gap in Online Learning

Opposite to popular perception, faculty are not reflexively opposed to online learning. In a recent survey of 3,500 postsecondary kinesthesia and administrators, Tyton Partners establish that a majority of faculty—63 pct—valued the potential impact of courseware.

The problem is, they lack the time and preparation to pursue it. The solution isn't another learning management system (LMS). Educators demand an easy onramp to composite learning that leverages the tools and repositories they already use. Google might have the answer.

Google Thousand Suite for Didactics is already a fixture in K-12 and higher educational activity. Co-ordinate to Google, 70 million students and teachers rely upon the online suite—half of all main and secondary students in the Usa and more than than 800 colleges and universities, as of last jump. Increasingly, Google'due south tools are the tools of didactics, as noted by the New York Times.

Google Classroom, which the visitor brands equally "mission control" for Thousand Suite, serves as a gateway to that popular suite. Classroom is no rival to a traditional LMS. However, by prioritizing simplicity and collaboration, information technology could serve every bit a bridge betwixt classrooms and the technological infrastructure that administrators employ to measure student learning.

Classroom 101

Compared to established systems similar Blackboard (founded in 1997) and D2L (1999), Google Classroom is a toddler. This August will mark the product's third anniversary, and it's growing upward fast. Last calendar month, for example, Google added the ability to invite students and co-teachers using Google Groups.

When the production is enabled by an administrator, educators can create electronic extensions to classes with just a few clicks. Instructors tin can share announcements with YouTube links, create assignments that leverage Google Forms, and share and annotate Google Docs. For their part, students tin access classes on whatever device—desktop, smartphone, tablet, or Chromebook—using the same credentials they use for Yard Suite.

Smart Tech Ideas for Schools

While some enterprising educators accept found ways to pilot online classes through Google Classroom, it's designed to support traditional in-person classes. I don't regard this as a limitation. As I've noted before, at that place are often tradeoffs to taking classes online, whereas most research suggests that flipped classes—especially pre-class activities—promote active learning and improve educational outcomes.

Google Classroom makes it easy—exceedingly easy—for educators to flip classes, or at least to channel some learning through a digital environment. Information technology's a welcome addition for any educator who uses G Suite for Didactics. In fact, now that Google has made Classroom available for personal accounts, information technology'due south a welcome improver for whatsoever educator who uses One thousand Suite.

Simplicity

Google Classroom's principal virtue is that it lowers the barriers to experimenting with technology-enabled instruction.

Alice Keeler, who wrote the volume on Classroom, trumpets its simplicity. "The genius of Classroom is that it'due south so simple," she said. "If y'all've sent an email, this is for yous. I tin become someone upwardly and started, collecting assignments, in less than five minutes."

Google Classroom leverages the materials instructors have already loaded into Google Drive. That is, where an instructor would have to manually upload a syllabus into Canvas or Moodle, she can simply select it from Drive for use in Classroom.

When I spoke with Erin Horne, assistant manager of professional education who co-initiated the Google Classroom pilot program at NC State University, she praised the production'due south interconnection with One thousand Suite.

"Google Classroom worked well with all of the tools I was already using," said Horne. "From an instructor standpoint, Classroom makes it very easy for me to facilitate that collaboration. Every bit opposed to creating one document and sending information technology around, with Classroom I tin can see the whole process and requite them feedback throughout that process, as opposed to treating their piece of work as this final product that they submitted to me."

Collaboration

Google Classroom is besides more conducive to process-oriented assignments than a traditional LMS.

Bethany Smith, acquaintance manager of instructional technology training, who co-initiated the NC Country pilot with Horne, said Classroom is well-suited to the project-based learning that occurs in education departments. "Every assessment is a project that needs to be turned in," explained Smith. "For case, students develop a lesson program over the class of the semester."

With Google Docs, instructors tin annotate lesson plans before students enter classrooms, and students can tag instructors with comments. Should they need to hash out an consignment in real-time, students and instructors are only a tab away from the residuum of Grand Suite.

Back to School

"From a teaching standpoint, the greatest do good of using Google Classroom over the other learning management systems that I have used is the opportunity for collaboration betwixt students equally well as collaboration with me as the instructor," explained Horne.

None of these collaborative features is unique to Classroom per se. For example, Moodle supports chat, videoconferencing, document versioning, and peer review. Google Classroom benefits from widespread familiarity with Grand Suite. In that location's a reason Schoology and Edmodo take opted for interfaces similar to that of Facebook: the all-time tools are the ones that nosotros already know how to use.

Scaling Up and Out

That Google Classroom extends G Suite doesn't make information technology a capable course-management or learning-management system. Faculty and administrators agreed that the platform would benefit from boosted assessments, give-and-take forums, and a full-fledged gradebook that could calculate pupil grades based upon assignments completed.

Nevertheless, in some instances, limitations could break bad habits. Consider course duplication. While duplicating a course may expedite setup, it doesn't always serve the interests of students.

"I recall ane of the best things about Google Classroom is that yous tin't reuse the whole class," said Keeler. "You lot can't just duplicate all of your assignments because every time y'all reuse an consignment, you should think for a 2nd about whether it's proficient for your students. It forces me to exist a lot more reflective and adaptive to pupil needs when I accept to reuse materials ane at a fourth dimension."

In other instance, educators take improvised solutions. Smith noted that instructors can create groups assignments using their Classroom roster with add-ons Doctopus and Goobric. Others have used Google Forms to create self-grading multiple-selection assessments, equally described here. Only there are limits to the extent to which educators can scale up Google Classroom.

While Google has released an API to support third-political party integrations, those integrations tend to exist manual in nature. For example, developers have created tools (e.thou. rosterSync) through which educators and administrators may sync class rosters using a CSV file. But let'southward clear: an API will non enable large-calibration adoption at institutions that rely upon automation. There's a reason that large universities such as NC State take constrained adoption to airplane pilot programs: they're waiting for the tools that will automate the creation of courses and collection of student data.

"Google Classroom isn't going to supersede our LMS," said Smith. "What I would personally love is for our LMS to integrate with Google Classroom, and so we could use Moodle Modules to create Google Classroom assignments."

That sentiment was echoed by Stan Martin, manager of Outreach, Communications and Consulting at the university's Part of Information technology: "I don't think our Learning Engineering science grouping sees it as a replacement for our current LMS, but they want to be able to leverage some of its functionality for the group work."

Google ought to admit those institutional investments and interoperate with existing learning-management and student-information systems via the Learning Tools Interoperability standard. When it comes to college didactics, integration isn't optional. (Equally it stands, most administrators aren't eager to support a 2d LMS.) However, if Google tin address those administrative concerns, Classroom could provide a span between the students and kinesthesia who already work in Grand Suite for Instruction and administrators who use LMSs to collect, manage, and report student data.