Learning Management Systems
Google Classroom and the Future of Blended Learning Environments
Blended learning, which combines traditional classroom instruction with online learning resources, has become increasingly popular in recent years. Google Classroom is one of the leading platforms in this field, offering a range of tools for creating effective and engaging blended learning environments. This research paper explores the potential of Google Classroom as a tool for enhancing student engagement, collaboration, and digital literacy skills. Our study examines the benefits and challenges of using Google Classroom in a blended learning context, drawing on qualitative data from educators and students. Our findings suggest that Google Classroom holds significant promise for the future of blended learning environments, offering a convenient and flexible platform for accessing course materials, communicating with instructors and peers, and completing assignments. However, we acknowledge that effective use of Google Classroom requires careful planning and pedagogical expertise. We conclude that continued research and professional development in the area of blended learning is essential to fully realize the potential of Google Classroom and other digital tools in supporting student success in the digital age.
Introduction
Education is a complex and sensitive sector with many stakeholders with different goals and motivations. Education comes with its levels such as kindergarten, primary school, senior secondary, college & university. Each of these levels has its own needs. Traditionally, the most crucial part of the education experience is the classroom.
With the presence of technology and easy access to information, stakeholders should experience convenience when working. Maximizing the benefits of technological advancement regarding ease of work is deemed vital in education. Learning Management System (LMS) is a mechanism that controls all facets of the learning process. An LMS is a robust, web-based software application developed to support E-learning by administering, documenting, tracking, reporting and delivering E-learning education courses or training programs. Popular LMS used in education includes Blackboard, open-sourced Moodle & Google Classroom. Universities and colleges often have their own LMS under their brand name.
The Learning Management System has 3 stakeholders namely the student, the teacher and the administrator. Parents might also be included as a stakeholder in schools for a particular age group. In terms of interaction design, the system has interactions such as learner-content, learner-learner, learner-interface & learner-instructor. For our research purposes, we decided to focus on the college experience of using such LMS.
College coursework is quite varied and time-consuming. Efficiency is the key for students and college professors while managing activities other than academics such as social activities and societies. In this scenario, LMS becomes a key tool to adopt and use to make assignment submissions quicker and also help education go remote. During the COVID-19, pandemic, universities around the world adopted technologies such as Google Classroom & Microsoft Teams just like their corporate counterparts. But this was remote learning where classes were held on Zoom meetings and assignments were scanned and uploaded digitally. This system alienates students from many aspects of the classroom such as interaction with peers, in-person social activities and team playing skills such as sports.
Our focus is on using LMS as a tool in addition to traditional classroom settings. This gives learners and instructors the best of both worlds. Blended learning, also known as technology-mediated instruction, web-enhanced instruction, or mixed-mode instruction, is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with physical place-based classroom methods. After the pandemic, universities still kept using LMS. Messaging apps such as Whatsapp were also on the rise where groups were created for peer-peer interaction & learner-instructor interaction. Blended learning is the future of education all around the world and in India where cellular data has reached rural areas recently at affordable prices. This means that any school or university with internet access can set up an LMS to facilitate learning. Not all subjects or coursework necessarily need LMS but it improves the experience for the ones who need it and not to mention the amount of clutter and space it saves as everything is backed up in the cloud. Certain universities have their textbooks uploaded to the cloud as well so there is no need to buy a physical textbook.
Google got into the education space with its initiative “Google for Education”. Just like Google’s enterprise software, this plan offers universities and schools customisable tools such as Mail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, some extra Google Drive storage, Google Classroom and Google Meet. Its competitors like Microsoft and Apple have their versions as well. The pandemic saw the growth of these services especially in the school market which previously had traditional offline tools. Across universities and colleges and schools classes were held online on Google Meet and assignments and other coursework were uploaded on Google Classroom.
Google Classroom is a free blended learning platform developed by Google for educational institutions that aim to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students. As of 2021, it has over 150 million users worldwide. It is available on mobile devices, tablets and PCs and is accessible from anywhere if you have an internet connection.
In India, it has been used in schools and colleges since the pandemic mostly to share files and documents among students and teachers. Day-to-Day communication happens on mainstream personal messaging apps. We decided to focus on using these digital tools in the blended classroom model post-pandemic, specifically Google Classroom.
Research Focus
While doing our research on the use of different available LMS in India, we found that Google Classroom was the most popular and the most accessible across schools and universities. Given that cheaper data connectivity has exploded the use of smartphones and the internet in India recently, the smartphone market is Android-dominated with 95% of the market share. This means everyone has a Google account required to make the operating system functional. So, every student with a smartphone can submit on Google Classroom with an internet connection, making the system accessible and easy to deploy in situations like the pandemic. The researchers writing this paper have personally also used LMS such as Google Classroom and Moodle. Due to the popularity of Google Classroom and given the time constraint and deadlines, we decided to focus on Google Classroom and it would also be easy to find research participants for the same. We decided to observe a sample of students using the system for a week in the blended classroom model and look for problems using ethnographic methods.
Research Aim
Our aim with this research is to understand how “students” use Google Classroom in their daily lives. Using validated methodologies we also aim to find the users’ problems, needs, and potential solutions and suggestions to improve the service’s overall experience. We also focus on new features that can be added to the system or existing features that can be improved upon. We also try to understand the usability of the system overall. While we are focusing on students, we have also studied research papers which have researched other stakeholders namely- teachers & administrators. How do students and teachers use the learning management system as a platform for learning and teaching activities in universities in India?
Methodology
Overview
Two sources of data were collected and utilized for the objective of this research study.
Contextual Inquiry was conducted to understand the actions of users and the reasoning behind them. The technology acceptance model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use technology. The actual system use is the end-point where people use technology. This was used to understand qualitatively how students are adapting to the blended learning model and technology. A survey was filled out by the participant on their experience of using Google Classroom. Affinity Mapping was used to sort out the data.
Sample
For this research, our sample was 5 undergraduate students pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of Delhi. They already use Google Classroom weekly for their coursework and thus were the ideal candidates. The respondents were aged between 19–21 years. We observed them for 1 week.
Research Results
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire has 12 items, six assessing perceived usefulness (PU) and six assessing perceived ease of use (PEOU). Its purpose was to quantify the likelihood of technology acceptance using an item format with end anchors of “Disagree” on the left and “Agree” on the right, and 5 response options (from left to right) of “Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree.”
The mean of the answers provided to the questionnaire is considered to be the average answer for each section.
Perceived Usefulness (PU)
Perceived usefulness (PU) refers to how confident people are that using a particular method can increase their job execution.
Table 1 shows the respondent’s perceived usefulness of Google Classroom. With a mean of 3.42 most respondents are neutral about the usefulness of the system. Among the items, “I find Google Classroom useful” got the highest mean of 3.81.
Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU)
The term “perceived ease of use” (PEOU) refers to how much a user uses a tool without exerting effort.
Table 2 shows the perceived ease of use of Google Classroom. “Learning to operate Google Classroom is easy” got the highest mean of 4.82 showing the usability of the system.
An open-ended question asked participants to rate their experience of using Google Classroom on a scale of 1–10 and the average response amounted to 7.
Contextual Inquiry
The participants were observed for a week passively as they used Google Classroom for their coursework. An interview was conducted to get an open-ended point of view with these questions:
- How has Google Classroom impacted your learning so far?
- What are the advantages of using Google Classroom for you?
- What are the disadvantages of using Google Classroom according to you?
- What are the challenges of using Google Classroom faced by you?
- What improvements/changes would you like to see on Google Classroom?
- What are your thoughts on technology being facilitated in an effective Blended Learning Environment?
- How do you envision the future of blended learning environments, and how do you think Google Classroom can support this vision?
- How has your experience using Google Classroom influenced your views on the potential of blended learning environments in the future?
Discussion
Participant’s PU mean is 3.42 (Neutral) which means most of them are okay with or without using Google Classroom. They don’t see it as an essential tool in education. They feel as universities functioned before such technologies were invented there is no urgent need. But they also agree that using Google Classroom increases their productivity and efficiency (mean=3.7). In the online and blended learning environment, they feel they have more flexibility over their coursework. They are also impressed with how course materials are well managed on the cloud and easily accessible with visible deadlines and notifications.
PEOU mean is 4.54 (Agree) which means students agree Google Classroom is fairly easy to learn and has less of a learning curve. As most of them use it on a weekly or monthly basis, the system’s simple interface and similarity to Google’s other products make onboarding easier and they get less lost in the system.
Contextual Inquiry & Interviews further provided insights that students expect more from Google Classroom with additional social features for quality conversations with peers and professors. Students also like to have their files stored in the cloud rather than on messaging apps such as Whatsapp where files might get deleted or lost very easily. The easy integration of deadlines and reminders into Google Calendar is also favoured by students.
Students felt that Google Classroom can improve its social features to facilitate interaction between teachers and students that goes beyond just sharing study materials. They found the app UI laggy at times and not optimized well enough. They often had to log in to their classroom through someone else’s laptop when they had to submit an assignment and did not have access to their laptop as the phone UI feels unreliable. They often have to scan and upload documents and wish the process could be quicker if file management and the uploading process on mobile devices were simpler. The homepage on the desktop also gets cluttered with older classes not getting archived or deleted by their owners. Some also showed their interest in adding paraphrasing and auto-generated citations.
The participants were very supportive of the blended learning model with the main theme being that as technology is disrupting every field it is natural that it disrupts education too. They feel a blended learning model helps them be more efficient as they do not have the luxury to travel long distances to reach their college to do mundane tasks such as just submitting an assignment. They feel this model has a better communication system and helps them acquire knowledge of using such tools correctly. According to them, during the pandemic, learning was made possible only because such tools were available.
Conclusion
Our study has revealed that Google Classroom offers a range of benefits for both students and teachers. For students, Google Classroom provides a convenient and flexible platform for accessing course materials, communicating with instructors and peers, and completing assignments. For teachers, it offers an efficient and streamlined way to manage course content and track student progress, while also enabling them to personalise instruction and provide timely feedback.
We have also found that Google Classroom has the potential to enhance student engagement and collaboration, as well as to support the development of digital literacy skills that are increasingly important in today’s society. However, we acknowledge that there are challenges associated with the implementation of blended learning models, and that effective use of Google Classroom requires careful planning and pedagogical expertise.
In conclusion, our research suggests that Google Classroom holds significant promise for the future of blended learning environments. By leveraging the power of technology to create more flexible, personalized, and interactive learning experiences, we can better meet the needs of diverse learners and prepare them for success in the digital age. As such, we recommend that educators continue to explore and experiment with this platform, while also engaging in ongoing professional development to enhance their skills and knowledge in the area of blended learning.
Here’s a link to the full research paper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ag16FFwyPjA9y9Mx4Y3n7nHHj_0qY1-q0FKftzoAA94/edit?usp=sharing
