Tag Archives: Google Classroom

Schedule posts for multiple classes in Google Classroom

What’s changing 

Teachers can now schedule posts across multiple classes in Google Classroom on the web. Teachers can use the assignment-scheduling flow to configure the: Due date Post date Topic 


Note: The rest of the assignment will remain the same Once set, they can select which classes should receive the post and when it should be published: 
  • Published immediately 
  • Published at a certain time 
  • Save as draft 


Who’s impacted 

End users 



Why it matters 

This update to the scheduling function will make it quicker and easier for teachers to assign classwork across numerous classes, saving them valuable time and simplifying class planning and management. 



Additional details 

  • There is no additional cost associated with this new functionality. 
  • Once an assignment has been scheduled, teachers can change the assignment within each individual class. 
  • Note that selecting “Copy settings to all” will delete any previously entered settings for the assignment. 
  • If a co-teacher schedules a post to one or multiple classes, they will be the owner of the associated Google Drive assets along with the course owner. 

Getting started 


Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus customers. 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

Originality reports are now available for Google Slides files

What’s changing

You can now use originality reports on Google Slides files, which were previously only available for Google Docs.

Originality reports allow students and teachers to compare work against billions of web pages and books on the internet, making it easier to ensure academic integrity of the work. It can be used when submitting or receiving files within Google Classroom and Assignments.

Who’s impacted

End users



Why it matters

Students widely use slides to showcase academic work. By expanding the originality reports feature to run in Slides, students can ensure they’ve properly integrated external ideas into more of their work, while instructors can check for potential plagiarism in more assignments.


Additional details

Originality reports are available for all Google Workspace for Education users, but teachers will still need to turn on originality reports for individual assignments in Classroom.
 
If you have a Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals account, you can turn on originality reports for 5 assignments per class. Unlimited originality reports are available for the Teaching and Learning upgrade or upgrade to Google Workspace for Education Plus
 
Additionally, students can check their Slides file for originality before submitting it in Classroom. When the student file is ready and submitted, their teacher will receive an originality report for the student’s work.



Getting started





Rollout pace

  • This feature is now available for all Google Workspace for Education users

Availability

  • Available for Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus customers 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources


Google Classroom now supports grade exporting to Follett Aspen, a third-party Student Information System

What’s changing

Google Classroom teachers can now export their grades to Follett Aspen, a third-party Student Information System (SIS). Grade export is a one-way information push that allows:

  • Admins to establish a connection between their district SIS and Google Classroom, and configure export settings that apply to Google Classroom teachers.
  • Teachers to manually link new or existing Google Classroom classes to their SIS, and push returned assignments and grades from Google Classroom.

This is only available to users in the United States and Canada. Additionally, there is no additional cost associated with this functionality.


Who’s impacted

Admins and teacher end users


Why it matters

This feature expands the interoperability between Google Classroom and Follett Aspen SIS in the United States and Canada. Grade export saves teachers time and duplicative work by keeping their SIS in sync with fewer manual steps.


Getting started



Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available as a core service to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus. 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers


Resources


Roadmap


Control whether students can unenroll themselves from classes

What’s changing 

We’re adding an Admin console setting which will enable admins to control whether students can unenroll from classes. If turned on, it will prevent students from unenrolling themselves from classes. A teacher or admin would have to unenroll them from the class instead. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why you’d use it 

Students erroneously unenrolling from classes can cause disruption for teachers and an increased support volume for admins. By using this setting, you can help ensure your class rosters are accurate and up to date. Additionally, if you’re using roster import, this makes it easy to maintain your SIS as the source of truth for the roster. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: This feature will be OFF by default, and can be enabled at the domain or OU level. Find the setting at Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Classroom > Student unenrollment. Visit the Help Center to learn more about controlling student unenrollment settings. 
  • End users: If turned on by their admin, students will no longer see the unenroll button on the course cards on the Classroom homepage.


Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available as a core service to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus. 
  • Available as an additional service to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers. 

Resources 

Making Google Classroom video meetings easier and more secure

What’s changing 

We’ve added several new features to Google Meet in Classroom, making it easier and more secure: 
  • The Class Meet link is now accessible on the side of the class stream, so students can easily join and teachers can manage the link from the stream. 
  • Students will be directed to a waiting room until a teacher has officially joined the class Meet link. 
  • Guests not on the class roster will have to “ask to join” and be admitted by the teacher before they can participate, so no unintended participants join the meetings. 
  • All designated co-teachers for a class will automatically be co-hosts in the meeting. This moderation tool will enable co-hosts to start the meeting with the same Meet link without the class teacher needing to be present. 

Who’s impacted 

Teachers and student end users 


Why it matters

These features make it easier for teachers to manage meetings, help prevent unintended meeting participants from joining meetings, and generally help meetings run more smoothly. Overall, teachers and students will have a smoother and more secure experience while using Google Classroom and Google Meet. 


Additional details 

Please note that after a Meet link is generated, if a co-teacher is added or removed, you must regenerate the Meet link to update the host status. We are working on changing this functionality so the host status auto-updates, and hope to implement the change by the end of the year. 

You can follow this Forum post to stay updated on the progress of the rollout, get additional tips, FAQs and other useful updates on this launch. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature, but Google Meet must be turned on for these features to be available in Google Classroom. Learn more about how to set up and manage Meet and use Meet for distance learning.
  • End users: These features will be ON by default for new meetings created in Google Classroom. Users with existing class Meet links should reset the link to get this updated functionality. Visit the Help Center to learn more about starting a video meeting for education. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available as a core service to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus. 
  • Available as an additional service to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

Roadmap 

View Google Classroom activity with new audit logs, view adoption and other metrics with BigQuery activity logs

What’s changing

We’re making two enhancements for Google Classroom, which will help Google Workspace for Education admins surface information about how Classroom is being used in their organization. Specifically, we’re introducing:

  • Classroom audit logs in the Admin console
  • Classroom activity logs in BigQuery, and Data Studio dashboards.

See below for more information and availability.






Who’s impacted

Admins



Why it’s important

By surfacing Classroom audit logs, Admins can quickly pinpoint who did what in their domain, such as: who removed a student from a class, who archived a class on a certain date, and more. 

For Education Standard and Plus customers, admins can export the Classroom audit log data from the Admin console to BigQuery, which allows them to query the data as needed. As a starting point, we’ve provided a Data Studio report template, which surfaces your data in an easily digestible format. Admins can copy this template and further customize it using Data Studio.

We hope this makes it easier for admins to quickly look up common activities in their organization and quickly act on scenarios where support may be needed.



Getting started


Rollout pace


Availability

Classroom audit logs
  • Available to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

BigQuery Logs + Data Studio Templates
  • Available to Google Workspace Education Standard and Education Plus customers
  • Not available to Google Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, Education Fundamentals, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers


Workspace for Education Plus now syncs Google Classroom courses and rosters with Student Information Systems

What’s changing

U.S. school districts with Google Workspace for Education Plus will be able to automatically set up Google Classroom courses and keep rosters in sync with their Student Information System (SIS). IT admins will do the setup via Clever, meaning teachers will no longer need to manually create classes and invite students to join them. Note that this will not overwrite Classroom courses that teachers create individually.

Who’s impacted


Admins and end users

Why you’d use it


This feature, created in partnership with Clever, improves the interoperability and integration between Google Classroom and most major SIS in the U.S. It saves teachers time with class setup and keeps Classroom classes and SIS rosters in sync with less manual and duplicative work.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled in the Admin console under Classroom settings. After that, go to Clever, link to the Google Classroom rostering app & follow the setup wizard.
  • End users: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled by your admin. There is no end user setting for this feature. When your admin sets up rostering via Clever, teachers will receive an invite within Classroom to teach the class with the roster pre-populated.

Rollout pace



Availability


  • Available to Education Plus

Resources



Roadmap


School matches are available in originality reports for Education customers

What’s changing 

In addition to checking student work for matches across billions of web pages and books, originality reports can now check for matches against a repository of student work within your domain. 

Once school matches are enabled by your admin, submitted assignments will automatically be added to your school-owned private repository after an originality report is run. If a match is detected amongst other documents in the repository, the match is included as a flagged passage for the educator to review. This can make it easier for instructors to evaluate the academic integrity of the student’s work and provide them with constructive feedback. 




Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 



Why it’s important 

School matches allow educators to compare student work within their school without compromising student privacy--with originality reports, you own your school’s repository of papers. Admins can also manually add or remove work from their school’s repository. 



Getting started 




Rollout pace 




Availability 

  • Available to Education Plus customers. Also available with the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Frontline and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 


Resources 

Improving originality reports in Google Classroom and Assignments to better detect potential plagiarism

Quick launch summary 

Originality reports in Google Classroom and Assignments are now better at detecting potential plagiarism by alerting you when a document contains symbols from different alphabets or other writing systems. 

Students sometimes swap out specific characters with similar looking symbols in order to trick plagiarism detection technology. For example, if the letter “a'' is replaced with the Greek symbol “⍺” or Cyrillic symbol “α,” a plagiarized assignment may not be detected as such. 

Originality reports will now alert you when a document contains symbols from another alphabet or writing system. Educators can then review it and determine whether the student had a legitimate reason for using those different symbols. Note that students who use originality reports will not see this feature. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: This feature will be automatically available to educators when originality reports are turned on for an assignment. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using originality reports. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to G Suite for Education and Enterprise for Education customers, as well as standalone Classroom and Assignments users 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business and Nonprofits customers 

Resources 

Improvements to Google Classroom: class links, SIS export, ApSki integration, and more

Quick launch summary 

Today, we announced several new features that will help administrators, teachers, and students be more productive using our tools. See our Google for Education blog to learn more about these features and other upcoming launches in Google for Education. 

Announced improvements to Google Classroom include: 
  • New to-do widgets: We’re adding a to-do widget for students and a to-review widget for teachers to help keep track of work in Google Classroom. Learn more. 
  • Join classes via link: Teachers can now send out links to classes, which students can join with a single click. This can help educators share classes anywhere they communicate with students, including in messaging platforms. Learn more. 
  • Student information systems (SIS) grade export: You can now export grades from Gradebook to your SIS. This can make it easier to keep track of grades in one central location. Learn more. 
  • Support for new languages: We’re launching Classroom in 10 additional Indian languages. Soon, Classroom will support over 54 languages globally. 
In addition to these improvements, we’re also making other changes: 
  • Assignments now generally available: Assignments will move from beta to general availability. Learn more. 
  • Applied Digital Skills integration: You can now connect your Google Classroom account with Applied Digital Skills to import classes, student rosters, and assign Applied Digital Skills lessons more seamlessly. Learn more. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins, teachers, and end users 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all G Suite editions. 

Resources