Great for the teachers and students across the globe, as Google introduces the all new education product suite called ‘Course Kit’ to offer the best chance to collaborate with G Suite in the LMS.
With Google’s new tool – Course Kit, instructors can seamlessly create new assignments, receive completed student work and grade within their existing LMS. It makes the process better, faster, secure and seamless for both students and teachers.
Students can now, simply upload their work by tapping into their Google Drive account. On the other hand, for the teachers too, they no longer need to go back and forth but simply use Google docs and Drive to assign tasks to the students, grade their work and share relevant course materials with the students within the LMS that they have been already using.
Course Kit uses the Learning Tools Interoperability or LTI standards and can therefore be set-up in LMSs that support LTI for smooth working.
Overview
Course Kit includes two tools- the first one is for the teachers to embed their course material straightaway from Google Drive into the LMS. The other tool is again for the teachers to use Google Docs and Drive to collect students work and give them timely feedback within the school’s LMS. In fact, it is this second tool where, once a particular student logs into the LMS, he/she finds an option to link his/her Google account to check task assigned by the teacher, complete it and then, he/she can move forward to attach directly the file from his/her Google Drive account, to submit it. Check out the image below that shows options available for students to submit assignments by using their Drive.
Students can now submit tasks into their LMS directly (Google Kit, Google For education)
However, once the task has been submitted by the student, they do not get the right to make any modification to the work submitted by them. Once, the work has been submitted, the ownership rights of the document are transferred to the teacher. It is only after the teachers has graded the task and pressed the ‘Return’ option that students get back the ownership right to the document and check comments and make modifications in the work.
For the teachers, the benefits of ‘Course Kit’ are immense. They can use the tool kit’s grading interface, switch between students and their submitted work files without having to move from one tab to the other. They can privately provide feedback on assignment submissions by using the rich collaboration features of Docs and Drive- such like in-line suggestions and margin comments. In order to further save time of the teachers, new features like customizable comment bank is included in the tool, for them to quickly insert commonly used margin comments that consists deeper and personalized feedback for the student’s work. Check the image below, showing options available specifically for the teachers.
Teachers Get Options to Add Personalized Comments using Customizable Comment Bank option
Further, by using the file embed option that’s present in the Tool Kit, teachers can add course material directly from Google Drive into LMS pages thereby making their work easier and unchallenging. Be it an attachment that consists-assignment information and syllabi to lecture presentations and videos, the tool indeed simplifies the entire process of sharing relevant material with students through file embed option in the LMS way too simple. Check out this option available in the tool kit, in the image below.
The File Embed tool makes sharing of related material a lot easier for the teacher
Speaking on the launch of ‘Course Kit’, the product manager of Google Cloud, Zach Yeskel said, “Historically the model has been that students turn in something, and instructors review it later, give feedback and return it to the student. And that works, but sometimes students get feedback too late to matter, sometimes it’s in a different document, sometimes it’s in a different PDF or a different file.”
Clearly, with the launch of Course Kit, Google is trying to make its user base in the education market stronger. Right now, the G Suite for education has roughly 80 million users and by making the G Suite products more collaborative and giving new online capabilities to students and teachers, it is surely looking out to expand the reach of the product to more users in the sector.
For more information on the all new product by Google, you need to check the video guide below that shows you every speck of the product at a glance. Enjoy exploring it more!
