The Paperless Classroom

Google Classroom is a great option for managing the daily interactions between you and your students. It is a powerful yet simple tool for creating flexible and paperless workflows. You may be using it, but are you getting the most from it? This session will dig into the various options and features, including assignment flow, grading, student management, and more.

Types of Classroom items

Classroom can create a number of different types of tasks.

Assignment - Classroom defines an assignment as a task that requires the students to DO something that will produce or complete work. It tracks the completion of the task, and will offer tools to grade and manage feedback on the work.

Quiz assignment - A quiz uses a Google Form in quiz mode to give students a quiz based on either short answer or multiple choice questions. The questions are created in the form, where correct answers, point values, and feedback based on correct/incorrect answers can be given. Completion of the quiz is tracked and the results of the quiz can be imported directly into the Classroom gradebook. If you use managed Chromebooks, quizes can also be delivered in locked mode, to prevent students from doing other things (like looking up the answers) until the quiz is completed.

Note: This option will create a blank Form to be turned into a quiz. If you already have a quiz made, use the Assignment option instead to distribute it.

Question - A single question, with completion tracking. Questions can be short answer or multiple choice, and students can be shown the answers of their classmates or not. Ideal for focused discussions, knowledge checks or exit surveys.

Material - For distributing content to students that they do not need to interact with. Good for simply distributing material to students like notes or videos. There is no workflow attached to material, since students don't need to DO anything with it.

Reuse post - An option for recycling previously used tasks, or to use a task from a different classroom.

Topic - Sets a topic heading so that tasks can be grouped together/

Key ideas for paperless workflows

Don't give out legacy worksheets that were designed for non-digital use. Distributing tasks that cannot be completed online lose the advantage of being distributed via Classroom.
Don't attach Word or other Microsoft Office files to Classroom assignments. They will need to be downloaded and saved then copied for reuploading. This breaks the way Classroom is designed to work! Convert any Microsoft files to Google format before distributing them.
For existing worksheets and tasks, rethink and redesign them to take advantage of the digital environment. Consider designing them in ways that allow students to work on them digitally, such as entering text in a Googls Doc, dragging and dropping objects in Drawings or Slides, adding pins to a MyMap, etc.
Link directly to online resources such as website links, online news articles, Google Earth locations, etc.
Consider allowing students to create work in whatever format they choose, and then attaching that to the task for submission. This provides for more creative responses. Classroom will manage the workflow for you!

Designing Self Marking Quizzes

Here is an example of a self marking quiz - Art Quiz

To design a self marking quiz...

Create a form and add as many questions as you like. Use only Short answer, Multiple Choice or Checkbox questions
Enable the form as a quiz in Settings. Choose your other options while you're there.
Enter the answer key for each question to select the correct answer(s), and to set the point value.
Set any feedback you wish to provide for correct or incorrect answers. You can also include links to URLs or YouTube videos.
Deploy the quiz via Classroom as an Assignment. As people submit the quiz it will track completion.

Here's more instructions from the Applied Digital Skills course

And here's a few more quiz tips

Your Activity

Choose from the following activities...

Take an existing task you ask your students to do, and redesign it to work in a digital paperless way.
Create a self-marking quiz using a Google Form. Add feedback for correct and incorrect responses.

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