A first-year education officer tried remote training for new employees using Google Classroom

Hello,
this is Masutani from the System Solutions Department.

I have been participating in an education improvement project since the end of last year, and starting this year, I am working as part of the education team, preparing training materials for new employees, and implementing and managing the training

In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, we also need to provide training to members who have been assigned to other locations such as Yokohama and Shikoku, so since last year we have been conducting more remote training for new employees

This year, I joined the education team and became the person in charge of managing the training. Here's what I felt..

Management and giving instructions is difficult!

Even though we created materials for each training session and shared them in a specific folder on Drive, we
still received questions like,
" Which materials should we use? " and " Where are the materials stored? Also, when training was conducted remotely, different people used different Google Meet, which confused new members. While this was partly due to our own incompetence, it really brought home to us how difficult it is to manage and give instructions for training sessions.

At that time, I heard from the representative of our Canadian office that " Canadian schools use Google Classroom to manage lessons and assignments, " and as I looked into it, I thought, " Maybe this will solve the problems we are currently facing, " so after researching how to use it, I decided to introduce it in our training.

What is Google Classroom?

Google Classroom is a tool that helps you manage teaching and learning in one place. It's easy to use, secure, and helps teachers manage, measure, and enrich the learning experience.
Source: https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_jp/products/classroom/

Anyone with a Google account can use it for free, and it's easy to use, so it's easy to implement, but when using it in schools, it is necessary to use Google Workspace for Education

Google Classroom can be managed by " class " and you can add teachers and students to each class
.

From here on, we will follow the official description and refer Classroom ," training providers as " teachers ," and trainers as " students

Features of Google Classroom

Classroom's features are as follows:

• Everything can be done in one place
  → Assignment management, document sharing, test administration and answering, etc. can all be done on Classroom.
• Easy to use
  → Creating and joining classes can be done with just a few clicks, so even those who are not very familiar with computers can easily do it.
• Joint calls with the whole class are possible
  → Screen calls can be made using Google Meet for the class
• Accessible from various devices
  → By installing the Classroom app, you can access it not only from your computer but also from your smartphone or tablet.

Classroom Features

Next, we will introduce the features of Classroom from both the teacher and student sides

teacher side

• Creating assignments, tests, materials, and questions
• Assignments, test grading, and feedback
• Managing student assignments and test scores
• Write and send shared information to the whole class or specific students
• Join a shared Google Meet for a class
• View your class schedule on Google Calendar
• Create a dedicated folder for your class under My Drive in Google Drive

Student side

• Assignments, materials, and test completion and submission
• Questions for teachers
• Write and send information to the whole class
• Join a shared Google Meet for a class
• View your class schedule on Google Calendar
• Create a dedicated folder for your class under My Drive in Google Drive

Compared to teachers, students can only perform limited operations such as submitting questions and asking questions.
Questions can also be sent so that only the teacher can see them, so who want to ask questions but are worried about what others think can do so without worrying about others.

Good things about using Google Classroom

to share some of the positive things I found after actually using Classroom in my training

No need to rush to prepare before the training

You can upload materials to Classroom, so you can check them from Classroom.
By uploading materials for each training session at once, you can immediately check the materials needed for that training session, so you don't have to frantically search for them before the training session, wondering, "Where did I save the materials?!

received feedback from new members who received training using Classroom, saying, " It's great to be able to quickly review the training materials at any time

 

Since everything can be done in one place using Classroom, it has become easier to give instructions to trainers and those in charge of training

When requesting training, multiple instructions were given, such as "The training materials are in this path" and "Use this Meet for the training," but since everything is already prepared in Classroom, training staff also have to do less preparation.
Also, students can simply join the Meet prepared in Classroom when the time comes, so they don't have to worry about "Which Meet will the next training be held in?"

 

Issues can be managed centrally

Since everything from creating assignments to submitting them can be done in Classroom, I felt like there were no missed checks.
Also, because it's linked to Google Forms, if you're using exact match or multiple choice tests, everything from creating them to answering and grading can be done in Google Classroom.
While we didn't give any assignments in this training, we'd like to use this feature in our next training for new graduates.

Conclusion

What did you think?
Classroom is free to use as long as you have a Google account, so I recommend giving it a try!
I also think it would be good to use it for new employee training at companies, cram schools, club activities, etc.

We will continue to test various tools to make training smoother and better. I hope to share my impressions of using them on my blog!

Thank you for reading to the end