Additional Features

Students are more likely to succeed when they attend a course regularly.  Recording attendance in a Virtual Classroom is imperative to ensure active student participation and engagement in the virtual environment. 

Best Practices:

1. Faculty is encouraged to establish attendance parameters for their classroom at the start of the term and consistently maintain them throughout.

2. Take attendance at random times each class session.

3. Ask directed questions in class to attendees to ensure they are paying attention.

Currently, Google Meet does not have a function to record online attendees.  The Chrome Webstore does offer some extensions to manage classroom attendance. Please see below for information pertaining to the highest rated alternative "Google Meet Attendance".

Google Meet Attendance 

Google Meet doesn’t have an official feature to take attendance but thanks to a Chrome extension you can easily do that.  It makes use of Google Spreadsheet to store information about the people attending the meeting — including the time they joined. Here’s how to configure the extension:

Step 1: Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for “Meet Attendance.” 

Step 2: After locating the extension, hit ‘Add to Chrome.’ Let it install. After successfully installing, the extension would light up when you’re on a supported page — Meet’s official portal. If you have Meet open, refresh your screen and the icon will appear.

Please note, YouTube will offer regular updates to this product on the Allan Caughey Channel. Please reference this library often as with many new Chrome Extensions, new features are released and can enhance your experience with this feature.

How to take attendance in Google Meet?

1. Open Google Meet in your browser.

2. Now, when a Google Meet session is active, you’ll notice an extra tab, a checkbox, right beside the ‘People’ tab.

3. Click on the tab to go to you the Google Sheet where attendance details are being stored.

4. Hover the tab and you’ll find a couple of options. Click on the ‘+’ Spreadsheet icon to create a separate spreadsheet for longer meetings. The first unnamed horizontal toggle, on the other hand, is used to automatically log the participants.

5. Toggle off and on to capture the current attendees, and then click on the checkbox tab to access the spreadsheet.

6. Name of attendees, alongside meeting URL and joining time would be displayed on the sheet.

Note: in order for the attendance function to work, all students must be visible for the duration of the session for this alternative to work. 

Click here for additional instructions for Using Breakout Rooms in your Meet.  Also available is a video Google Meet: Breakout Rooms Alternative.

Videos can be a critical part of meetings and presentations. As more meetings are taking place online, it’s important that presenters can share smooth videos with audio to all attendees, wherever they are. Situations where you may benefit from high-quality video and audio in presentations include:

• Teachers sharing videos as part of a lesson plan to students.

• Presenting slides with embedded videos or GIFs, or with animated transitions between slides.

Additionally, by adding the ability to present a tab rather than a window or your full screen, we’re providing more control to presenters to make sure they can minimize distractions while they’re presenting.

Please ensure students have their audio enabled prior to starting the video/audio demonstration.

If faculty or students seeking alternatives to using this feature, we recommend one of these two best practices:

1. Share the video in advance of class via a course announcement, asking your students to view it as class preparation and be ready to actively participate in the classroom discussion relevant to this viewing.

2. During the class, post the URL in the Meeting Chat and take a break from the synchronous meeting long enough to view the video and perhaps an additional 5 minute break.  After that time, reconvene the group and continue with the synchronous classroom activities.

Google Meet just released an enhancement to assist demonstrations using audio/video files. 

Please watch this video for information and a demonstration using this feature.

• How to Watch Videos with Students in Google Meet

Remember: Faculty needs to be using Google Chrome when entering the Meet to use this feature.

Instructions to Split a Windows Screen:

Grab the top of one window and move it to the far left until you see an outline of a split screen. Release when this appears to snap the window into a split screen. Grab the other window and drag it far right until it snaps into the right frame.  See the videos below for Windows, Mac, iPad and iPhone. Should you use an alternative device, consider searching YouTube for quick videos on this extremely useful technique.

1. How to Split Screen for Multi-Tasking using Windows 10 Snapping

2. How to use Split View on your MAC - Apple Support

3. How to Split Screen/Multitask on iPad

4. How to do a split screen Multitasking on iPhone

Instructions to Split a Windows Screen:

Grab the top of one window and move it to the far left until you see an outline of a split screen. Release when this appears to snap the window into a split screen. Grab the other window and drag it far right until it snaps into the right frame.  See the videos below for Windows, Mac, iPad and iPhone. Should you use an alternative device, consider searching YouTube for quick videos on this extremely useful technique.

1. How to Split Screen for Multi-Tasking using Windows 10 Snapping

2. How to use Split View on your MAC - Apple Support

3. How to Split Screen/Multitask on iPad

4. How to do a split screen Multitasking on iPhone