Reservations in teaching with Google Plus

Six months ago I started using Google+ as a more transparent and effective way of managing the communication element of my online classroom. The potential benefits of the platform were clear. Most of the complications I perceived in those first few classes were resolved as the Google developers team made upgrades to the interface and from my perspective, we were able to create a fairly dynamic and interactive experience for the students as well as for myself. However, over the course of the last six months I have noticed three major problem areas that have led me to reconsider just how effective teaching with Google+ might be.

Controlled Classroom

Google+ gives an instructor the opportunity to create a class circle but unlike a regular classroom (online or traditional) when a student drops or is dropped from a class or merely has issues with the instructor it is a much more complicated process of detangling them from the class. The professor can remove the student from circles but unless all the students in the class also remove that student they still have the capability of being “there”. Often this is not a big deal but in a situation where a student feels they are being treated unfairly it creates an opportunity for a lot of back channel communication that other students might feel is unwelcome and can add a layer of negativity that no one wants tainting their classroom. Additionally, because an instructor has removed the student from the class circle, they are unable to see the posts and communications as they happen and thus, lose the ability to moderate them.

Student Frustration

Not every student is tech savvy.  Though the feedback from students about google+ has been largely positive there is a consistent number of students who really seem to dislike using google+ whether because it is new and they resent having to learn it or because it requires them to log into an additional “system” to access parts of their class. There are a lot of reasons why I tend to minimize this complaint personally. Most of the students have a learning curve for the LMS and google+ is no different. With google’s email alerts students get notifications about class posts to their student emails. It is possible to make them aware of what is going on in google without them logging in constantly.

There is a difficulty though. It isn’t possible, often, for students to understand just how much more they are getting from having such a dynamic platform in which to communicate with one another. Even if I explain it and my philosophy behind it, it is impossible to balance the two in the eyes of the student who is determined to see it as a hassle. I think about other courses where we ask students to do things that are unconventional or outside the mainstream student experience. In my acting class my students must get use to sitting on the floor. They must wear clothes that enable them to be able to move freely. Some complain. Some embrace it. The class cannot be successful without it. In this situation it becomes an issue of measuring how I define success for the course and determining if the inconvenience outweighs the benefits.

My Personal Expression

I love Google+. I have a lot of things that I post personally. That makes for a big problem however. Whatever I post to public turns up in their circle. Whatever THEY post to public turns up in the class circle. So far this is a minimal intrusion from the student end, but for myself, who engaged deeply with social media, I have had to curtail my own personal expression out of respect for the students’ need to have a fairly clean classroom environment. Even something as trivial as changing my profile photo becomes an issue. It seems like a bit of a design flaw that I cannot have students simply see the things I post to their specific circle with the rest of the information weeded out. I could employ the use of hashtags but that would add an additional layer of complication and for that, see problem #2.

I’m not saying that I’m done with Google+. I think from the educator standpoint it has so many rich advantages that I’m hesitant to completely close the book on it. But I also can’t ignore an honest assessment of the problems. It seems, in some ways, that the very things I love about it (the openness, ease of posting, dynamic platform) are the things that hold the root of the problem. And honestly, I’m not sure how to solve them.