Tamsyn Gilbert
William Cope
Reda Sadki
Jason Berg
Duane Searsmith.png "Rita van Haren")
Rita van Haren
Deidja Ngabo Alain Constant
Fazal Rizvi
Adam P Rusch
Heather A OchmanNew Learning’s Updates
Google Docs/Classroom Good for Learning? Not So Much ...
Over the past several years, Google Docs has morphed into Google Drive, and then last year, Google Classroom was bolted onto Google Drive. What does this mean for education? Not much, we would argue, except for getting a lot teachers and students online. OK, now that’s big ... to give credit where credit is due. But if you’re looking for real change in the quality of teaching and learning, Google Docs/Drive/Classroom is not the place to look.
Google Classroom takes online a whole lot of old-fashioned classroom ‘stuff’. Teachers deliver instructions through class announcements. They distribute content that might include digital documents, web links and YouTube videos (and sure, that’s better than handing out photocopies). They pass out assignments in the form of Google docs where students work. They issue deadlines instructing students when they must turn in their work. Comments can be then made by the teacher and grades given (percentage scores only). They can administer item-based tests.
None of this is new. None of this is even pedagogically interesting, let alone innovative. Actually, beyond these old notions of teacher-student relations, there’s not really much that is at all educational about Google Classroom. It is simply a few old-fashioned teacherly concepts bolted onto a series office and file storage apps that Google had already made. There’s not a lot happening in Google Classroom other than to pull your content, and your lives (and along with you, your students’ lives) into Google’s cloud.
“More teaching, less tech-ing”, is the snappy Google slogan. Correct, teaching is Google Classroom’s focus more than learning. And the ‘less tech-ing’ part of the slogan actually means that every learning relation here is so conventional, so predictable, so obvious, that the software seems “easy”. But digital tools allow us to change our teaching practices, and change isn’t always easy.
Here’s what we mean by these claims, six reasons why Google Docs/Drive/Classroom are not so great, speaking educationally. And here we want to contrast with what we have been attempting to achieve in the Scholar e-learning ecology.
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It’s still a teacher-centered, content transmission model. A big focus of Google Classroom is content delivery by the teacher, such as digitized documents and YouTube videos. In Scholar, our Creator space is focused on students as knowledge producers, and our Community space is focused on research and discussion. Don’t just watch the video on volcanoes that your teacher has sent you, search and share volcanoes information and write a volcanoes project!
- It’s still a simple hub-and-spoke model of teacher-student relations ... in a world where, in social media, we have become used to many, intense, peer-to-peer relations. Here’s the project sequence that Classroom uses as an overlay to Docs: teacher creates assignment (a doc) => student writes in the doc, and turns it in => teacher grades the assignment => student reviews and edits the assignment (the same doc, old versions not kept). Here’s our Scholar sequence: teacher creates a project with a learner accessible rubric => students create a first draft of their work and submit for peer review against the rubric (this version is preserved) => peers give structured feedback (number of peers determined by teacher, randomly allocated or to a specific person, and whether they are anonymous or not) => students revise based on feedback and optionally write a self-review explaining how they revised based on the feedback => the teacher offers feedback (actually in any/every phase of the project) => revision => publication of the final version to the student’s personal web portfolio. Yes, this is more complicated, but that’s the difference between a collaborative learning environment compared to a teacher-centered one. And it’s much, much easier to do this online in Scholar than paper-based or conventional file or web document based peer review.
- When there is collaboration, it’s in a chaotic, formless space, with arbitrary comments appearing and the jumping colored cursor showing who’s doing what in real time. Here’s a fundamentally important idea: effective teaching and learning requires staged activity sequences. In project work, literacy educators have long known that the best writing goes through phases, from drafting, to feedback, to revision, to publication. This is why careful versioning must be built into student work spaces. We do this in Scholar, but Google Docs does not. The only way to track development is to replay changes in reverse, hundreds and thousands of changes, keystroke by keystroke, each so small to be educationally meaningless. However, in Scholar the versions (draft, post-feedback revision, published) are really important because they show the incremental effects of formative assessment. They show development and learning. Google docs is smart technology. It’s not educationally smart.
- Assessment is limited if it is just a score with a teacher comments, or an item-based quiz—this is all that Google Classroom offers. In Scholar we offer formative assessments structured around assessment rubrics (hundreds of which are to be found in the Learning Modules in Scholar’s Bookstore, and teachers can make their own), coded annotations, publication recommendations, and a language checker, all available to students, peers and teacher. Then, our Analytics dashboard provides a detailed, whole-class and individual student views on twenty or so measures including rubric-based reviews (peer, self and teacher perspectives, separately and combined), academic language level, progress across versions, and even a contribution factor which values the feedback you have given others. The result is not a single, simple score that the teacher types into the Classroom app, but a multifaceted summative assessment—‘big data’ in education, made simple and accessible.
- Completed student work in Google Docs lies buried in a folder on a ‘drive’. In Scholar, final works are published to a student’s personal portfolio webpage.
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Learning design in Google Classroom consists of “announcements”, “content delivery” and “assignments”. In Scholar, learning design is framed around a dynamic, “social web” knowledge ecology, based on principles of peer to peer learning and collaborative intelligence. This is why Scholar’s Learning Modules (in the Scholar Bookstore) are not just about content delivery. The Learning Module is a hybrid space for lesson activity sequence design and content access. They can be made by teachers for their own classes, for sharing across their school, or publication to a wider world through the Scholar Bookstore.
We’re highlighting these differences here in order to make our case. To be fair (not that we really need to be fair to one of the world’s most valuable and profitable companies), Google Docs/Drive/Classroom is a step in the right direction if it takes teachers and their students online. And it’s way ahead of the dreadful legacy Learning Management Systems which lay out the course syllabus week after relentless week, and have teachers and students shuffling files, one upload and download at a time. Also, Chromebooks are fabulous, way ahead of iPads when it comes to price and functionality.
But we’re disappointed in Google Docs/Drive/Classroom to this extent: we don’t just want to move the educational game online. We want to change the game.
Tell us what you think ...
I find this to be a fairly narrow review of Google Classroom. If used properly it can host student led discussions, compile resources about a common area of interest, and facilitate feedback between peers & teachers. However, as the Update focuses on, it can also be used to simply digitize worksheets, provide copies for students and collect them. I believe Google Classroom is a good starting point for teachers new to digital collaboration tools because it makes hosting discussions and providing feedback on assignments easy.
Sure, if teachers don't change their pedagogy, Google Docs/GC doesn't change much. But if teachers use them to allow students to collaborate in a way never offered before, it can be amazing. For example, if a teacher shares a blank doc and allows all the students to collaborate on a project of their choice, it changes the ballgame a bit. I have certainly pushed out my fair share of worksheets but now I'm starting to utilize the R part of the SAMR model and I'm seeing some amazing work from my students.
Hi Dr. Cope! I know we've had our fair share of debate about this, and while I have my own concerns about changes I'd like to see in Google Classroom, I do think it has the ability to support authentic, transformative experiences. A Google doc itself is nothing different from a traditional handout; however, what you include in that handout in terms of links, rubrics, videos, and brainstorming space can help students to create something magical in the classroom.
I use Google Classroom as a teacher precisely because it allows my students to create magic. It is only a platform through which my students, their peers, and I gather to discuss our work.
I wonder if you've looked at all at the SAMR model? https://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos/introduction-to-the-samr-model Any technology can be used in a traditional manner, but it is up to the teacher and students to use it to change education. Do I think Google Classroom is that game-changer? No. But for now, it's a free option that my school can afford to use to provide my students with a platform to experiment using 21st century skills, and to maybe, maybe change the way they think about learning in the process.
Tools are tools, as long as they are free and offer useful features, it's the purpose for which we use them that makes them useful or not.
I think that nowadays we have plenty of choice and we can use some features of more directive platforms together with other tools.
The fact that some tools are used by a lot of people may influence on its adoption, because they are familiar and people avoid time-consuming to explore them, on the other hand it's also useful to try new things and compare.
I, certainly, have some concerns when some companies get too big with a concentration of power and the risk of abuse or misuse of users data.
I'm a regular Google tools user. I think that Google Search is the best, Google translator has evolved semantically and is much better than the awful automatic translations we had some years ago. Google Scholar is also useful, in spite of directing us for many paid academic journals. Google drive has good features to produce and share documents, Google forms are easy to use. But you have many other free alternatives to all these Drive features. Google Maps are also very use. Google Art Project is excellent - https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/project/art-project?hl=pt
I've never used Google Classroom. Moodle is quite spread in Portugal among schools and academic institutions. I use it on a daily basis to run a community of teachers. I have used other free platforms like UDUTU. Quite frankly I don't think you need to use any particular platform, you can run a course in a free blog tool together with other free tools. This way you grant the users total access and I'm an advocate of eportfolios, so that each participant may control one's own space and keep a record of one's work.
I have not tried google classroom nor scholar and thus have many questions and doubts. Since I work with schools (K-12) to provide them low cost ICT solutions, I am interested to know which one of these would be best suited for schools here in India. I have signed up with both. Whilst browsing about Google classroom - I noticed that they too have a feature where students can comment on the stream and help their fellow classmates. Something similar to Scholar's peer-to-peer interaction? I also found Google's training link very informative. I look forward to exploring all the features in Google and Scholar and would like to learn more about how the bookstore resrouces will benefit teachers and students.
I wonder if this is a commercial competition: Google/vs/Scholar.
I see Google docs/drive/classrooms as technologies, not pedagogies. Therefore it is not surprising that they provide in the first place efficiency, rather than efficacy or innovation. I am keen to learn more about Scholar which I discovered a few hours ago.It seems to have added value on the side of pedagogies which is in the end what matters.
I am sincerely interested in the concepts of learner as both content creator and social collaborator. The workforce entering the marketplace today has an ingrained expectation that they can not only find the answers they are looking for in seconds, but that they can also share content with their social circles in the same rapid fashion. They can influence ongoing dialogues by sharing content that interests them and that they perceive that others will be interested in as well. So many of us do this on a daily basis in our personal lives, but have a limited ability to do so in our professional lives.
At work, >95% of what we know we have learned on the job, not in the classroom. Individuals have vast amounts of passion and knowledge about their careers. How can we unlock both so that we can begin sharing and providing access to key information whenever and wherever it is needed? How can I as a manager of the learning function, increase our ability to do so?
I have to admit I have never used Google Classroom nor have I used Scholar to a great extent. I do, however, use a learning management system which is probably very similar to Google Classroom, to teach English. Although it is teacher-centered (there is only one student) and I make limited use of collaborative learning, I have to say it has helped me a lot. It allows the me to easily organize the classroom and allows the student to log on to follow the course and review what has been covered. I don't meet with my student in person, so this type of tool is critical.
Google Classroom may not make use of modern pedagogical principles such as collaborative learning, but it (and other LMSs) are not without their (very big) advantages, namely making the administration of the class much easier.
It is just not the matter of bring everybody online at some extent Google classroom is fine but when we are talking about e Learning solution we need to go beyond the Google classroom that has some limitations. There are some assessments that require group assignments, discussion, blogs and journals where the whole class will participate and students will be following the new learning curve and explore the new ways to learn the technology which is being used in the education system. My interest will be to see how the scholar will give us ability to learn new things as we will proceed this course.
About ten years ago, I did a Master's level course through the University of London which followed precisely this model/digital ecology. I can personally vouch for the efficacy of the methodology - small groups, learning from peers, all drafts saved in a personal portfolio, little intervention by the tutor (I would have liked more of this actually) and a quite strict timeframe for the submission of weekly postings and readings (this suits me as I am not a well-developed self starter and need prodding). My real interest here is the applicability of this model for very large enrolments (massive i.o.w) so I will watch this space with interest as we proceed with this new course.