Google Classroom updated their system in January 2020, adding features that are very helpful for teachers.

Teacher’s looking to analyze the originality of a paper and give students some help with attribution can use the new originality reports feature.  

On the student end, the originality report feature highlights source materials in addition to pointing out where attribution is needed.  According to Google, the features compare “student’s work against billions of webpages and millions of books.”   The feature also links websites that they might have plagiarized from so that students can see if they are accidentally copying work.

 On the teacher end,  the new program will send a plagiarism report to the teacher so they can provide feedback on where citations are missing and what may have been accidentally plagiarized.  This can be very helpful in curbing cheating and plagiarism in the classroom, and also be used as vital learning experiences for life out of grade school. The disadvantage is that this feature can only be applied to three assignments per class before an admin would have to upgrade

Learn how to turn this feature on!

Another useful tool is the rubric tool.  Teachers can attach rubrics to their assignments, adding up to fifty different criteria and ten levels of grades.  This can help students stay on track and ensure that they cover all areas of the assignment being graded. When teachers are grading, total points are automatically calculated, and students can easily see where their mistakes are once the rubrics are returned as well.  Rubrics can also be reused from past assignments to save time grading, a huge benefit to teachers.   

Ms. Laura Fucilli, English teacher at LRHS, used the rubric feature with a recent writing assignment and raved about how user friendly and time saving the feature is. She told The Ledger the rubric itself was easy to set up and navigate. She can’t wait to use it again.

Learn more about this feature here!

The Google update will help students and teachers with their learning and teaching experience.  With these two new tools, Google gains another feature setting them apart from other online class systems.