Google Classroom

Google Classroom provides an alternative to Blackboard that many teachers find preferable, especially for writing classes. To access Google Classroom, go to your UA Little Rock gmail suite and scroll until you see the Google Classroom icon.

When you create a new class, you can email the access code it generates to your students so they can join the course. You can also manually add them in the "People" tab.

Unlike most LMSs, Google Classroom is not hierarchical. Instead, the interface is designed around the feed/timeline metaphor. By default, all your activity shows up in the student's "Stream." You can also post announcements to the course stream that will be distributed to students as email.

You can organize your content in the "Classwork" tab. Instead of folders or learning modules, Google Classroom uses Topics to organize other content. Topics, like all other content on Classroom, are draggable. You can arrange them in whatever order you want. If you use Topics, make sure you select which topic you want something to go in when you create it. If you forget, you can always drag it to the correct position.

The four content types in GC are "Assignment," "Quiz Assignment," "Question," and "Material." Each one of these has its own use cases for your course.

Assignment

Anything you want students to turn in for a grade should be created as an Assignment. The Assignment popup screen allows you to give the assignment a title and add a description and attach any relevant documents or links. If you click "Add" and upload your assignment sheet as a Word document, it will automatically be imported into your courses Google Drive. You can add several other content types this way, or create new Google Docs content by clicking "Create." Google Classroom does have rubric functionality now. Check out this help page if you want to know more. Otherwise, you can assign a point value and due-date for the assignment just like in Blackboard. Be sure to put the assignment in the correct Topic if you use them. Finally, If you don't want students to see the assignment right away, clicking the arrow next to "Assign" will reveal options for "Schedule" and "Draft. Students submit assignments as Google Docs (or Word documents). You'll then provide feedback and a grade in Google Docs as well and return their document to them when you're done with summative comments.

Quiz Assignment

GC quizzes are delivered through Google Forms. The process is pretty straightforward, and if you've ever created a regular Google Form, creating a quiz works exactly the same way.

Question

Questions are good replacement for discussion forums. You can create a question thread and allow students to respond in short answer form (and to reply to each other). It isn't as robust as Blackboard's discussion forums, but it's also much easier to use on the student's end. Questions aren't gradable, so if you want to assign a point value to student responses you'll have to keep track of it elsewhere.

Material

GC "Material" is basically everything else. Whereas Blackboard distinguishes among several different content types, most content can be added to Google Classroom as Material. If you need to add links to readings, PDFs, videos, recorded lectures, etc, just add them as Material and make sure to put them in the correct topic.

Google Classroom is a great option to consider if you are not particularly fond of Blackboard or if you're already comfortable with Google Docs.