How can I improve my Classroom pages to best meet my students' needs?

Five years ago, teachers within our building had several options for platforms to use as a base for their online class management. Blackboard and Edmodo were popular choices, and Classroom was a little-known tool that a handful of teachers were using. Not shockingly, student (and parent) feedback shared that the options were overwhelming; with some students in eight classes throughout the day, they found it difficult to keep track of which teacher was using which platform (including teachers who used more than one within the same class).

Today, Blackboard is obsolete in our district. Edmodo is still used by some, but the large majority of teachers in our building use Classroom to organize content for their classes. I’ve seen some of my students’ Classroom home pages, and, including sports and activities, some of them need to do a lot of scrolling to get through all the classes they’re a part of.

I’m totally happy (and, from what I’ve heard, students and parents are, too) that as a building we’ve mostly shifted to a common platform. However, I’ve been curious about how my Classroom page holds up to other Classroom pages. Is it confusing for students? Am I using the best possible methods of organization for my materials? Do students know where they need to go to access everything?

To explore these questions, I created a Google Form for student feedback. I shared the form with others in my department, but the large majority of responses are from my classes. Here are some of the responses and my observations:

I knew my students were avid users of Classroom, but I’ll admit I was (pleasantly) surprised that over 90% of the students were part of six or more Classroom pages! Props to us for common technology platforms to ease student stress!

This question led to the most diversity in responses. I’ve loved the Topics feature since it came out, but sometimes I’ve felt like I’m the only one in my classes who uses it. Based on the responses, roughly 50% of the kids never use Topics at all--and over half of that group does know that the Topics feature is there! Only a small percentage of the students use Topics with regularity.

I’ve also been intrigued by the different ways that teachers organize their topics. I struggled with how to phrase this question--I’m hoping the choices came across clearly to students. Assuming they did, however, 60% of students liked organization by type of assignment. I’m curious, though, whether these responses are skewed by the fact that that’s how I organize Topics on my pages (and these were primarily my students answering). I did have one student offer feedback in a later question that it might be helpful to organize topics by post number (e.g. “Posts #1-10,” “Posts #11-20,” etc.). Once Google allows us to tag multiple topics to a single post, I’m all over that idea!!

First and foremost, I really enjoyed the pretty symmetry in this pie chart. This answer seemed the funniest to me, particularly in contrast with the answers to how frequently students use Topics. Although less than a quarter of students said they use Topics with regularity, 50% of students said that the best way to share lots of resources was to post to the Stream and use Topics to find what they’re looking for :) I might like to follow up with some of my classes on this contradiction--could we work together to figure out how to use Topics effectively?

I also asked a couple free response questions to see what students found overall helpful and confusing about Classroom. MANY students said they appreciated the Stream and the About tab: having everything in one place, easily accessing due dates and assignments, having all their resources in one place that they can access from everywhere. The feedback is a breath of fresh air after hearing complaints for so many years about trying to find resources in 12 different places!

Most students said they couldn’t find anything particularly confusing about Classroom. However, hearing about some confusion was helpful. A few students said they get lost if posts aren’t labeled clearly (or seem vague or redundant). Several students commented on struggling to search for what they’re looking for on the Stream (yargh--the trouble with Topics strikes again!).

The other common trend in “confusing” responses had to do with teachers mislabeling or being unclear; for instance, one student said that sometimes they get assignments posted in the About tab, so they don’t have any sort of notification about it. Others commented on getting confused when the post numbering system isn’t consistently used. A couple responses noted that Classroom is only helpful if teachers use it consistently. If their teacher is inactive for several weeks, it’s tough to remain familiarized with that page.

So these results have led to a few thoughts for me:

1. I feel a lot less disconnected from how students are feeling about my Classroom page. I love surveys that remove the feeling that I’m on a remote island :)

2. Students seem to struggle the most with finding materials, perhaps for a number of reasons, which leads me to a question I want to continue working on: How can I encourage the use of Topics to help students find their information efficiently? Here are some strategies I want to try:

• Remind students more frequently of the Topic I’m tagging to each post: “Your homework is Post #55 on Classroom, and please note that I’ve tagged it as a Homework Topic for you to look up in case you can’t find the post.”
  
• Be a tad more specific with my Topics. Yes, the most popular response indicated that students like that I tag general types of posts (Homework, Formatives, Summatives), but I’m curious about seeing if moving to be more specific might help (perhaps instead of just “Formatives,” I could try “Grammar Formatives,” “Vocabulary Formatives,” etc.).
  
• Try to be more physically present in watching as students interact with Classroom. I’d really like to notice a student is scrolling endlessly through the Stream so I can show them the power of Topics in their moment of need!
  
• Incessantly send feedback to Google to allow the option for tagging multiple Topics to a single post. Just kidding--I won’t do that. I’ve already sent the feedback once, but YOU can sure send it! Just click on the little question mark in the corner of the screen on your Classroom page to send some quick feedback/suggestions to Google.