Report from the Trenches: Evaluating GooglePlus for Online Learning

Good grief, it’s been busy this week. I shouldn’t be surprised, I finished one class, started up two new online classes, started the independent studies for two more. Oh and I taught most of another professor’s courseload. All in all it was pretty fun. I admit, I was worried about the much bigger transition to google+ this week. I moved from one small class that had my undivided attention (well ok, it shared my attention with a big peach) to 2 large classes (on different subjects) that had to compete for time with all of the other things going on this week (including that 3 week class!)

I have learned a LOT about teaching with google+ in the mean time. I’ve figured out what things I want and what not to do.

First, I want nested comments. Please for the love of all that is crunchy can we please get nested comments. Please just tell me it’s in the plans. There is no good reason these shouldn’t exist. Everyone wants them. Justin Bieber wants them, Papa Smurf wants them, your mom wants them and cries a little every day she logs on and has to try to figure out who the hell is talking to who about what in long streams of comments every day. PLEASE. If you are reading this and you are a janitor at Google please find someone important and leave a note on their desk tonight that says “GET GOOGLE+ NESTED COMMENTS!”  Then put a heart and a smiley face so he knows you aren’t a psycho.

Second, I want the posts to stay where I put them. I am not a nerd ninja but I feel pretty confident that it shouldn’t be so terribly complicated to make those posts be chronological by the person who posted it and not by the last comment. See, I like to number things. That way my students can see which discussion post correlates to what module. And sometimes they all get going at once and other students are unable to find the posts at all. I know they are not making things up because I have gone on and had a really hard time finding a post that I knew was there because I posted it. Man, if facebook can do it . . . .

Finally, I want google+ to no longer need invites but I’m not going to crab about that. I have no idea how all that works. For now I still have one student who can’t get on because every time he tries it tells him to try later. It’s a draw back and a hazard for teachers who want to use it.

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The students in the short class were asked to fill out a special section of course evaluations referring specifically to google+. The overall reception was pretty positive and the feedback was great. I am addressing what I can to make the experience as easy as possible. Some of it is out of my control.

Things to avoid in the future. Whenever you’re doing something new you have to make choices and they’re not always right. There were a couple of things that I just made the wrong call on and had to chock it up to “lesson learned.” Folder those emails, don’t delete them. (Yes I did just make that thing-word a doing-word). They pile up fast but in the event that you need copies of what was posted particularly if later, a student edits their post, you have the original. I didn’t have this situation happen yet but I was about half way through the class when I realized that it could be a problem.

The other big mistake I have made so far is posting general information to both class circles at once. It’s not easy to learn the names of all of your people so quickly so when they all start jumping in and responding and you no longer have them segregated into their proper circle because you thought you’d be all suave and cross post something to both at the same time . . . well don’t do that. At least not the first week of classes.

So what worked? The addition of the notification for a post option. The option to email students the posts I share solved a big problem. Before, students had to keep checking in to see if there was something new. Now they know to check in regularly but if it is something that requires their quick attention, they will get an email about it. This also gives them a direct link to important posts which gets me around the shuffling post issue.

The startup. I think the system I have gotten for starting the class, though pretty labor intensive at several stages, works pretty well. It IS a lot more work. There are a lot of automatic things that are now manual. My students talk to me all the time now.

Wait, that last one. That one rocks. I get students talking to each other and to me non-stop, inside the discussions and outside of them. I can answer them right away and often the question is asked to the general circle so that after a day or two students see the fact that the professor is responsive and friendly and they feel more comfortable talking too. In online classes the way that student-teacher interactions happen are like a series of silos. Other students don’t get a lot of opportunity to see that student-professor interaction happen. In the classroom they can observe the body language and facial expressions of the professor as they talk to other people. This gives them a lot of information.

It is definitely a trade off. But I think that as google continues to improve and incorporate other google apps into googleplus its potential for enhancing e-classrooms will only grow. I don’t know if I could run more than maybe three online classes at one time through google+ in any given semester, it’s that much more work, especially at the beginning, but it’s definitely worth it.

Tags: classroom, edtech, google+, googleplus, Online Learning