Union and Google Classroom

Union and Google Classroom

Why Use Google Classroom?

While Union is great for offering regular classes and workshops, it can also be used for selling courses and teacher trainings. When these courses include assignments and resources and you want to track things in one place instead of over email, you will likely benefit from using Google Classroom.

Steps to building a course/YTT:

1. Adjust Google Classroom Access Settings

2. Create a Class in Google Classroom

3. Create a Series Event in Union w/Google Classroom Link

4. Organize and build out all Assignments in Google Classroom

5. Add Union Links to Google Classroom

Adjust Google Classroom Access Settings:

To ensure that students can access your Google Classroom with any email type change the following settings in the Google admin panel.

From Google: Allowing users to join classes from other domains allows file sharing to your domain.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.
   Sign in using an administrator account,

2. Choose one: If you’re using G Suite for Education or G Suite for Nonprofits, click Apps > G Suite > Classroom. If you’re using G Suite Basic, Business, or Enterprise, click Apps > Additional Google services > Classroom.

3. Click “Class settings.”

4. Under Who can join classes in your domain, choose this option:

5. Click Save.

More detail can be found here

Create a class in Google Classroom

You can create a class to assign work and post announcements to students.

If your school has a G Suite for Education account, you should use that email to create your classes. However, anyone over 13 years old can create a class using a personal Google Account.

Computer AndroidiPhone & iPad

1. Go to classroom.google.com.

2. At the top of the Classes page, click Add Create class.
   
   Note: If you don’t see Create class, your account only lets you join classes. Switch accounts or contact your G Suite administrator for help.

3. Enter the class name.

4. (Optional) To enter a short description, grade level, or class time, click Section and enter the details.

5. (Optional) To add a subject, click Subject and enter a name or click one from the list that appears when you enter text.

6. (Optional) To enter the location for the class, click Room and enter the details.

7. Click Create.

Classroom automatically creates a class code that you can use to invite students to the class. You can always get the class code at the top of the class stream.

Create a Series Event in Union.

When you schedule an event you have the option to mark it as a “Training or Workshop Series” When you turn this ON then all occurrences of your event will be grouped together, so that customers must book every occurrence together (for a teacher training, for example).

You will then schedule all of the planned live sessions. Leave out any planned on-demand videos, or any regular classes you plan to include in the training out of this part of the event build. You will provide special links to the on demand videos and classes in the Google Classroom environment. You should only include sessions in the series that are for the training participants only.

Finally at the bottom of the event build there is an option for “Additional Email Text.” this is a good place to put in a personal message, links to the google classroom, or directions on what they should expect next such as a list of textbooks to buy for example.

Organize and build out all Assignments in Google Classroom

Now you are ready to build out your course in Google Classroom to line up with your series event in Union.

We recommend using the “Topics” feature in Google classroom to organize the classwork. You should create a topic for each section of the class. For example in our YTT we would have a Topic called: “Week 1 Content and Assignments” “Week 2 Content and Assignments” etc… you might also choose some topics like “Pre-Training Assignments” and “Resources” here is an example of what that might look like. Click the “+ Create” button and select “Topic” to create a topic. You can also use that feature to add assignments and materials.

Add Union Links into Google Classroom

So you’ve built a class in Google classroom and now you want to organize the materials.

For each section of the training you can add two links. First a link to that week’s scheduled live sessions and second a link to the on-demand videos for that week.

For the link to live sessions you will simply use: https://www.union.fit/registrations

For the link to that week’s on demand videos you can get the link from the categories page in Union. Go to Events > Categories, click the drop down next to the word “Edit” for a particular category and select “Public Video URLs”. The URL at the top of the page will be the URL you can use in your Google classroom to send people to that week’s videos.

Finally, to input these links into Google Classroom. Press the big “+ Create” button and choose “Material”. Give it a name like “On Demand Videos for Week 1” and then click the “Add” button and choose “Link.”

Input the URL you got from the category page in Union and viola! You should end up with something like this. Note: the text "We suggest watching...order." and the list of 6 videos was added manually in Google Classroom.

There are so many additional features that Google Classroom offers to help create an optimal learning experience for online trainings. For a more comprehensive tour of Google Classroom take a look at the following resources:

Other Helpful Links

Google Classroom Help Community

Creating Google Forms and templates

Building Zoom Events in Union