Google Updates its Education Suite
“I was a bit struck by the focus on monitoring engagement and analytics. I certainly won’t deny that engagement during the pandemic has decreased, but I also feel like the engagement (and disengagement) of my students is already apparent in the work they do (and don’t) complete, and I don’t need an algorithm or analytics to keep me apprised of who’s doing what.”
Last week, Google announced a rebrand with some sweeping changes to its education-focused products, and as a teacher at a Google Suite school, my interest was piqued.
The changes to Google Classroom are presented, unsurprisingly, as a response to the needs of teachers and students working remotely, but I was a bit struck by the focus on monitoring engagement and analytics. I certainly won’t deny that engagement during the pandemic has decreased, but I also feel like the engagement (and disengagement) of my students is already apparent in the work they do (and don’t) complete, and I don’t need an algorithm or analytics to keep me apprised of who’s doing what. A strong, data-driven classroom approach provides that for me anyway (and, of course, I’m referring to the Modern Classrooms model, which allows me to keep tabs on all of my students and their progress myself).
I’m not opposed to increased data or data-based interventions in the classroom (on the contrary, I think data should drive everything we do in the classroom!), but I am a bit wary of the heavy focus on monitoring and oversight, which makes Google Classroom feel a little like “Big Brother,” and I’d rather see Google making smaller, more technical improvements to the platform.
To be sure, there do seem to be some important security updates and quality-of-life and feature improvements coming to Google Classroom, with a focus on 3rd-party integrations (with both teaching tools and SIS’s/gradebooks) and accessibility (the offline features in particular seem promising, and I hope the Android-based mobile submission and grading improvements find their way to iOS soon - the photo scanner seems very cool). I’m a bit surprised that we still can’t batch-edit assignments and questions (if I want to set the same due date on multiple assignments I have to change them one by one, rather than being able to change them all at once); perhaps this will come with the improvements later this year (this feature would be immensely more useful to me personally than the Rich Text options that were announced).
Still, my biggest takeaway from these updates, which appear to be motivated by feature requests and feedback from teachers and administrators, is that people seem to want more and more ways to monitor students and teachers, and I’m just not convinced that’s the best way to actually promote the engagement we want to see - it feels more reactive than proactive, and the implication is that students (and teachers) aren’t trustworthy and require vigilance. I’ll be curious to see how these features look and work in practice - I may be wrong, and they may provide useful analytics, gathered in a sensible and respectul ways. I only know what I read in the blog posts, and I didn’t attend the live sessions. But based on what I’ve read, I’d rather see updates and improvements to the platform and refinements to the already fully-featured educational suite than a push for increased monitoring and greater oversight.