In the wake of coronavirus pandemic, several schools and colleges across the globe have switched to online classes. To support the transition, Google Meet and Classroom are gaining a few new features. These features will help improve the experience of students and teachers during online classes.
Google Classroom Features
Firstly, Google Classroom is gaining support for 10 Indian languages including Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, and Urdu. With this addition, Google Classroom supports a total of 54 languages.
Considering the fact that several users are new to Google Classroom, Google is making it easier for students and teachers to manage their tasks with a to-do widget. Students will see a to-do widget, while teachers will get a to-review widget. It will contain date-based tasks classified across Assigned, Missing, and Done sections.
Google is making link sharing easier on Classroom. Apart from a Copy link button, there’s a Share button to share the invite link of the online class across apps like WhatsApp or Telegram.
The Mountain View giant is enhancing originality reports with this update. In case you didn’t know, originality report checks for plagiarism. The number of originality reports per class has been increased from three to five. Teachers also have the option to print, save, and download reports to share with students and parents. Originally reports will come to Google Slides and Docs in the future.
Other features coming to Classroom include student engagement metrics, deeper integration with other tools, offline connectivity improvements, and integration of admin capabilities to help troubleshoot Classroom issues.
Google Meet Features
Coming to Google Meet features, the software giant is bringing new administrative controls to meeting moderators. Below are the new administrative features for Google Meet arriving in September:
- Prohibit participants from joining meetings after they’ve been ejected or after they’ve been denied entry twice
- End meetings for all participants when class is finished
- Manage join requests with ease by accepting or rejecting them in bulk
- Disable in-meeting chat and set restrictions on who can present during a meeting
- Lock meetings until the moderator joins
As far as other visual improvements are concerned, Google Meet will gain 7×7 grid support that lets you see up to 49 students at the same time. A collaborative whiteboard is also coming to Meet this September.
In October, Google Meet will gain background blur and custom backgrounds. It is worth noting that admins can disable custom backgrounds if needed. For G Suite Enterprise for Education customers, Google Meet will also have an attendance tracking feature and breakout rooms.
Other features that are coming to Google Meet later this year on G Suite Enterprise for Education include hand-raising for students to ask doubts and Q&A options along with polls.
