Google Classroom

What if a learning management system (or LMS) were less concerned with the management aspect of online learning and more focused on integrating tools instructors already use? This is the idea behind Google Classroom, which collects some of the company's most popular web services into a stripped-down LMS that educators can use on the fly to deliver some traditional instruction outside the classroom.

To classify Google Classroom as an LMS stretches the definition of the term. Google Classroom doesn't have a grade book, well-defined roles, or advanced reporting. Nor does it support Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), through which administrators might connect Classroom to their existing LMS or Student Information Systems (SIS). Rather, Google Classroom leverages the ubiquity of G Suite for Education to offer a simple, online complement to in-person classes. Students and educators already share and annotate Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, present work using Google Slides, and meet remotely via Google Hangouts. A growing number of students, particularly at a K-12 level, work from chromebooks, and some rely on Android tablets and smartphones. Google Classroom provides an easy way for educators who are already invested in the Google ecosystem to experiment with online learning.

If your school already subscribes to G Suite for Education, Google Classroom requires no additional payment—it comes bundled with the Suite. Educators can even configure Google Classroom using personal G Suite accounts. Google Classroom aligns with the gratis offerings of Schoology and Edmodo, both of which can be used by individual instructors or scaled up by administrators to support entire school districts. While Google Classroom is remarkably easy to use, it does have limitations. For example, Google Classroom lacks Schoology's interoperability (namely the aforementioned LTI support) and Edmodo's educational marketplace.

Google Classroom Basics

While Google Classroom is designed to work with G Suite for Education, if you have a @gmail.com address, you can sign up for Google Classroom, provided you intend to only invite other users with @gmail.com addresses. When it comes to G Suite for Education, administrators can choose whether to restrict access to Google Apps to those within their own domain.

Google offers an API to support third-party integrations with Classroom. For example, developers have created several tools (such as rosterSync) through which educators and administrators may sync class rosters using a CSV file. While a manual sync doesn't match the seamless interoperation of a more advanced LMS, I don't regard this omission as a deal breaker.

Google Classroom serves a different niche. If your institution supports Blackboard Learn, you're probably already using Blackboard. Educators who opt into Google Classroom do so because of its simplicity, which is central to its appeal. You don't need an IT department to use it, and you only have to use it to the extent that it improves your in-person classes.

This raises a key point about Google Classroom. It's a platform designed to support, not replace, in-person classes. When you sign into Classroom, you arrive in the class stream, which echoes the dashboards and activity feeds of other LMSes. From the stream, you can access assignments and posts or add a class announcement, a question, or an assignment. That's about it.

The same minimal approach applies to customization. Whereas a traditional LMS allows you to add and rearrange the course page, Google Classroom only permits educators to customize the theme (or upload a photo) and to add relevant class details, such as the meeting space, a syllabus, and a short description. Otherwise, design and layout is prescriptive. You can't do much to change it. This lack of flexibility may frustrate some instructors, but it may well entice others who may find oppressive the amount of customization possible (and often required) in setting up a course in a more traditional LMS.

Thanks to the platform's responsive design, students and educators can access Google Classroom on any device—desktops, smartphones, tablets, or chromebooks—using the same credentials they use for G Suite for Eduction. Google also offers iOS apps and Android apps for the service.

Getting Started

Using Google Classroom requires about five minutes of work up front. Instructors can use the About pane to customize the course description or add course materials, such as links and syllabi. Adding students is as easy as typing names or email addresses in the Students pane. Google auto-populates details using contacts; however, those contacts will need email addresses from the same domain if you've chosen to restrict registration in this way.

Instructors can control the level of student participation, but only to a degree. For example, if I want to use Google Classroom to communicate class updates and post assignments, I might stipulate that only teachers can post and comment, whereas if I want students to annotate and discuss materials, I might let them post and comment. The hitch is that although Google Classroom allows me to invite co-teachers to a class, the platform doesn't support alternative roles for, say, teaching assistants or class mentors. I would welcome finer-grain permissions (more on this below).

Once you've customized your class description, uploaded a syllabus, and invited students, your class is effectively online. From the stream, you can mouse over a Plus (+) icon to access the platform's core features: Reuse Post, Create Question, Create Assignment, and Create Announcement. The order here seems counterintuitive, however. I wouldn't reuse a post until I created one, and chances are I would begin with some kind of welcome announcement rather than a question.

Announcements, Assignments, and Questions

It's best to think of Announcements as glorified tweets. There's no rich-text formatting, so you'll want to keep them brief. That said, you can attach links, YouTube clips, or documents from a desktop or a Google Drive account. For example, while I uploaded my syllabus in the About pane, I also attached it to my first Announcement—in case students didn't read beyond the class stream.

Instructors can also tag Announcements with Topics. I correlated my Topics with the units from my syllabus. Assignments, meanwhile, include a field for a question, as well as a second field for instructions. The key difference is that you can add a due date to Assignments.

The Questions feature is a great way to encourage students to engage with class material before they come to class. In fact, you can assign a question to the class or a specific (perhaps struggling) student. By default, Google Classroom supports two types of questions: short answer and multiple choice. This is fairly limited for an LMS. For example, Blackboard offers almost two dozen question types, including hot spots, matching, ordering, either/or, and fill in the blanks. Google Classroom's silver bullet is its ability to interoperate with Google Forms to support formative assessments. In fact, many educators have used Forms to create self-grading, multiple-choice assessments, as described in this post.

Any Announcement, Assignment, or Question can be posted immediately, saved as a draft, or scheduled for later posting. This means that you could, theoretically, work ahead once you formalize your syllabus. Moreover, any item you create can be repurposed in other classes or sections of a course.

Process and Grades

It's helpful to pause here and imagine two concrete use cases that might entice a prospective Google Classroom teacher. First, imagine that I want students to apply some logical strategies they learned in class. In the past, I've distributed an anonymous essay and asked students to identify logical fallacies and to rewrite sentences. Previously, I used Google Docs, though it can become a project management nightmare once dozens of students begin submitting rewrites. With Google Classroom, I can share the same Google Doc and permit students to identify logical fallacies (via Comments) and attach revised Google documents without leaving the Assignment. If I want, I can also configure the assignment to allow students to upload any doc from their own Google Drive.

Alternatively, perhaps I want students to watch some media and write a response that identifies its logical fallacies. With Questions, I can create a short-answer response with a link directly to the media (on YouTube), and I can ask students to identify at least one fallacy that a peer hasn't yet identified. This exercise compels students to not just critically engage media, but also to read one another's responses. Students aren't just preparing for class by applying what they've learned. They're also situating their claims in the context of a learning community.

At some point, you will need to grade that work, and when that time comes, Google Classroom simplifies the process—perhaps to a fault. Instructors can access work that needs to be graded from multiple entry points. They can access anything with a due date from the course calendar or click on items marked "Done" in the class stream. Why Google marks items "Done" as opposed to "Submitted" I cannot say. Given that students can resubmit work—ideal for multipart editing assignments—"Done" seems like a misnomer.

While Google Classroom lacks a grade book, it does allow instructors to share qualitative and quantitative feedback with students. Instructors can view a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation, comment on a Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide, attach a numerical score, and add a private comment to the student. All graded materials can be exported as CSVs or Google Sheets, which the instructor can manually load into an LMS or SIS.

G Suite for Education

Given that I don't see Google Classroom as an LMS replacement, I don't expect it to duplicate all the feature of an LMS. Google Classroom's value is its relationship to G Suite for Education, which is already ubiquitous in both K-12 and higher education. While Classroom makes excellent use of the company's productivity apps, it would benefit from tighter integration with its communication tools.

Imagine, for instance, that a student botches an assignment, and, rather than failing them, I want to have a conversation about where they went wrong. While Google Classroom allows me to email the student from the grading pane, imagine if I could initiate a Google Hangout to work through questions. While Google Calendar appointment slots allow educators to schedule web meetings using Google Hangouts, I would love to see Hangouts foregrounded throughout Classroom. This would make it easier for me to strategize with co-teachers or answer logistical questions from students. Chat integration would require controls, which is yet another argument for more extensive roles with finer-grain permissions.

The Takeaway

Google Classroom is no Blackboard-killer, nor does it aspire to be one. While educators can use it to share materials, make announcements, and simplify the collection and evaluation of student work, Google Classroom lacks the customizability of Moodle, the analytics of D2L Brightspace, the ecommerce of Instructure Canvas, and the third-party resources of Blackboard.

Realistically, Classroom competes more directly with social-learning upstarts like Edmodo and Editors' Choice Schoology, though even those platforms boast granular roles (Schoology) and educational app stores (Edmodo).

Google Classroom is, rather, a front-end interface for G Suite for Education. It's a platform that enables instructors to move some of their traditional classroom work to the internet, rather than moving entire classes online. That may be enough for many educators, especially those who work at schools wary of technological adventurism (or perhaps unable to support it). For those educators, Google Classroom lowers the technical, economic, and institutional barriers to experimenting with online education.