Online Learning Troubleshooting

Having entire year groups isolating at home is incredibly challenging when trying to keep their learning on track. Through using Google classroom and Google meet, this is made much easier by still being able to have that all important teacher input and support.

By doing this, we do then step into the realms of student access, home technology technical issues and parents becoming frustrated by these issues. This is made even more difficult by not having any control or remote access to the students personal devices to help with technical issues or an understanding of their home connectivity.

At Outwood Academy Adwick, our first step was to setup and publicise an ‘online learning hotline’ to field calls from parents trying to get their child online. It helped and we were able to resolve issues and get students into the lessons.

Here are some of the common issues that cropped up and things to try to resolve them.

General Points

Most issues on a PC/Laptop can be resolved by the student opening an incognito tab in Google Chrome, going to classroom.google.com and logging in. If other users are signed in with personal gmail accounts on the computer, this is the cause of most issues.

On a smartphone/tablet, most common issues come down to the user having not installed the apps or having enough storage space left to install the apps (available here). Without the apps they will not be able to access the lessons and this needs resolving before any other issues can be addressed.

The Google meet link isn’t appearing

1. Late to the lesson and have missed the link - the student needs to be ready in Google Classroom at the publicised start time (all timetables can be seen here)

2. The student hasn’t refreshed the webpage (if on a PC/Laptop), although this does auto refresh after a few seconds.

Unable to join the Google Meet link when clicking on it in Google Classroom

1. On a PC, sometimes Google Meet will show a black screen. This tends to be down to issues with the computer itself - slow machine, firewall blocking it. Quick fix is for the student to join the video meet on a phone and work on the google classroom tasks on the laptop.

2. On a phone/Tablet

   1. Google Meet app isn’t installed - install from the app store and sign in with student google account.

   2. Other google accounts getting in the way - remove other google accounts from google meet and try again.

   3. On some occasions it did work and then stopped. These issues were either fixed with a full reboot of the phone/tablet or deleting all of the google apps and reinstalling.

Google Meet video isn’t streaming well or the meeting gets cut off

Things to check

1. Where in the house is the student working in relation to the broadband router (non tech term ‘wifi box!’). If the student is on the other side of the house they need to move into the same room as the router and try from there.

2. Are there any other users on the home network at that time and are they doing things such as streaming Netflix, playing online games etc. as this will cause network slow down.

3. Ask them to go to speedtest.net and run a test on their home broadband speed. If this is low then that will contribute to issues (<10Mbps will be problematic. A typical UK home connection is 60Mbps as a point of reference). This may then highlight an issue that can only be resolved by their Internet Service Provider and they will need to contact them about their connection speed.

Student unable to edit the files in Google Classroom

1. This can be an issue in mobile and tablet apps. By default, Google Classroom allows students to edit Google Docs as a PDF using digital ink. To get round this, in the top right corner there is an icon that looks like a square with a diagonal arrow through it. Pressing this icon takes the student to the Google Docs app where they can edit the document.

2. The access mode is in view only. To solve this simply click on file and make a copy. This creates an editable version of the task you have been asked to complete.

Student unable to re-join a Google Meet after being removed

This is an issue caused by a student being removed from the remote lesson due to poor or inappropriate behaviour. Whilst this lesson is continuing it is not possible for a student to re-join and they should now wait for the next lesson.

The teachers gone, what do I do?

If the teacher of the remote lesson has left the Google Meet, this is because of connection issues. If a teacher does leave, then all students must also leave and re-join 10 minutes later.

Hopefully, some of these pointers can help you to get your students into the virtual classroom at times when they may be working from home.