Google have announced that new Google Meet features will launch later this year to help educators improve moderation and engagement in remote or hybrid learning environments.
With more than 140 million educators and students now using G Suite for Education worldwide to create, collaborate and communicate, many more schools and educators are using Meet to stay connected. Google today shared some Meet features that will be launching later this year to help educators improve moderation and engagement in remote or hybrid learning environments.
Increasing control of your meetings
First off, new Google Meet features will make it easier to manage meeting attendees. When someone asks to join a meeting (or “knocks”), they won’t be able to knock again after being ejected from a meeting, and a knock will no longer show up after a moderator rejects it twice. Plus, Google are updating the knocking interface to make knocks less intrusive for educators. Moderators will also be able to end the meeting for all participants, ensuring no students linger after the teacher has left. And Google Meet will soon block anonymous attendees from joining any Education meetings by default, though schools will be able to opt-in to allow anonymous participants.
To help students and educators feel more comfortable while on video from their homes, Google Meet will enable them to blur out their surroundings or replace their background, with presets or uploaded images (with admin controls to disable this functionality).
Later this year, Google will release additional moderation features Google Meet to give educators full control of their meetings, such as the ability to mute all participants at the same time, disable in-meeting chat for participants, and restrict who can present. Google Meet will also provide a setting that requires that the moderator join before the meeting can begin.
Creating engaging virtual classes
As many educators learned this year, it can be hard to meaningfully engage students when classes are conducted remotely. The following Google Meet features, launching later this year, will give educators more tools to boost interactivity with their students.
For all G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education users, there will be a hand raising feature to make meetings flow more smoothly and an integrated collaborative whiteboard to help teachers and students share their ideas more naturally. In addition, a larger tiled view will allow you to display up to 49 participants at once. Google Meet will also introduce closed captions in additional languages to make lessons more accessible.
For G Suite Enterprise for Education customers, Google are also releasing several premium features: attendance tracking to provide a record of which students joined the class, breakout rooms so educators can split classes into smaller groups, Q&A to provide a way for students to ask questions without disrupting the flow of the class discussion or lesson, and polling to engage students to share their voice.
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