Birch Learning Platform vs. Google Classroom vs. YouCanBookMe

Google Classroom allows teachers to post for daily lessons and assignments. It also allows teachers to be able to communicate with students easily outside of class. Students are able to stay connected and know where to find all information and resources easily in a streamlined manner for all of their classes.

Incentivized

Youcanbook.me is great for small businesses or for self-employed professionals who need an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for handling large numbers of clients. It's great for eliminating inconvenient miscommunication and tedious back-to-back emails in order to set a proper date and/or meeting details. However, if you need a more sophisticated system that fits into your company's IT procedures and carries sensitive data, an in house solution would fit best.

• Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
• Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
• Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.

Incentivized

• One really helpful feature of YouCanBook.Me for our organization is that everyone can see appointment times in their own time zone. We frequently schedule interviews with applicants nationwide, as well as communicating with team members located in 32 different countries, so this has really simplified scheduling.
• We rely heavily on Google Calendar for staff scheduling, so it is great that YouCanBook.Me can sync your availability straight from your calendar as well as automatically adding meetings to your calendar when they are booked.
• We use YouCanBook.Me to schedule follow-up calls with people we meet at conferences and other recruiting events. It's really simple to have someone sign up for a call, and this has been a really effective tool for us to stay in communication with prospects.

Incentivized

• The content management of the Classroom is not that good. The sub-section for notes, syllabus, or discussion is missing.
• It doesn't have parental control feature.
• It converts the excel output into a normal file. All the formulas and pivots got changed into plain text.

• I don't like the generic email invite to a Zoom meeting it sends out. Once I get the date sent to me in my email, I have to cancel the meeting and re-set the meeting with my own personalized Zoom Invite. Sometimes that is confusing for the prospect. However, now that I write this...I see an article on the web site about creating a unique Zoom meeting invite. I will have to check that out.
• I set my work days as 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. but on the calendar it shows a time available at 6 p.m. My last appointment should be listed as 5 p.m., as my appointments are in 30-minute increments and I leave at 5:30 p.m. So that is confusing and resulted in a few appointments booked when I am not actually working.
• I book demos for a coworker, and if he is busy in another meeting, I have to block it off in my calendar as "Jack is Busy" so that prospects won't pick a time that is not available for Jack. I wish there was a way I could link his Outlook calendar to my YouCanBook.Me. Perhaps there is, but I am unaware of it.

Incentivized

Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.

Simple design and seamless integration with Google tools and drive, but missing some key features. However, since it is limited in overall functions and ability to truly personalize / customize, it is quite user friendly and easy to set up and get going, other than sending out the code to your course or dropping students in via their gmail account. Users of Google Forms and sites will find the layout similar in design.

Incentivized

We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.

Incentivized

Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.

It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.

Incentivized

I haven't tested or evaluated another digital classroom website or application. I feel like Google Classroom is convenient for many reasons such as compatibility to Google docs, slides, etc. I also love the ability to link to YouTube and other sites. I don't know if there would be a site that is easier to maneuver.

Incentivized

YouCanBook.Me allows fuller messaging in addition to appointments. Calendly is more minimalist than YouCanBook.Me. I prefer having more control over the look and feel, and functionality than it offers.

Incentivized

It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.

Incentivized

• Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
• Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
• Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning

Incentivized

• It's helped our Professional Services Team immensely. Although we don't have numbers as far as an ROI, we use it daily across our whole team of 8 project managers.
• We also use youcanbook.me to schedule in interviews with our 20+ researchers who are moderating sessions. Our admin team also uses youcanbook.me to allow our employees to schedule our weekly massages.

Incentivized