Using Google Workspace for Education for real-time feedback and collaboration
While feedback is proven to be an important aspect of student success, sometimes the reality is that it is hard to reach every student and give timely feedback.
The presence of teacher-to-student feedback and student-to-student feedback in the classroom has been on the rise, as John Hattie and his research points out in his book “Visible Learning”. For those not familiar with Hattie, he developed a way of ranking various influences related to learning and achievement according to their effect sizes. In his ground-breaking study “Visible Learning” he ranked influences that are related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects. In order to find an answer to the question “What works best in education?”, he found that feedback ranks among the top influences on student learning.
Many educators may argue that feedback has always been a part of their classroom culture but with the information we have from this research, our approach to feedback has certainly changed.
Feedback is more than writing “good job” to praise a student’s work or “?” next to part of a student’s work that may be confusing to the evaluator, it is about focusing on the task, not the learner, and providing clear direction that the student can immediately act on.
Why Google Workspace for Education is the solution
As a former teacher and current teaching and learning consultant, I have experienced how life-changing Google can be for the classroom. Google offers several applications that truly help teachers “work smarter, not harder.” A few of my favorites include:
- Google Docs
- Slides
- Classroom
- Forms
- Keep
Most people familiar with Google applications know that the collaboration aspect is what sets Google apart. The collaboration feature is what makes it so much easier for teachers to provide feedback – while students are working on personal narratives the teacher can offer comments in real-time in the same document. This is a great feature of Google Docs and Slides.
EXAMPLE 1
In a class discussion, a student poses a great question and the teacher wants to evaluate the class on their thoughts. This is possible through posting questions for students in Google Classroom. This feature also allows the teacher to view and share results with the class immediately.
EXAMPLE 2
Simply give your students a formative assessment and then Google-grade it immediately. You will be able to give feedback to the whole class on a question that was most missed, or give students individual feedback on each question. These are all possible with the Google Suite for Education, and they are truly unlimited.
LINKS
(https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/) (https://visible-learning.org/2013/10/john-hattie-article-about-feedback-in-schools/)