Likelihood to Recommend - During the pandemic, the college needs a fast and easy solution to conduct Google Classroom. The integration with Google Accounts and Google Meet allows the university to run and access the Classroom on a large scale. - The teacher wants to conduct some exams in third-party software like Moodle. But we have not found any plugin for this famous open-source learning platform. The exam system in Google Classroom is so poor that it doesn't even fully screen the test when students are writing their exams.
Read full review I think it is well suited for K-12 schools, especially for tracking student growth over time. The ability to easily upload state assessment results and produce pre-built reports provides teachers actionable data. The online assessment system is more appropriate for secondary (grades 6-12) students in our district due to the types of assessments our elementary (K-5) students complete. I have some experience with other systems and think that the illuminate software offers more flexibility in the types of data that can be stored.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Easy to use Item banks Outstanding customer service. Reasonable pricing models. Integrates well with student info systems. Read full review Cons Although usually in the discussion with other LMS apps such as Schoology and Canvas, Google Classroom doesn't possess as in-depth of a platform. There is no ability to set individual learning paths, pace student work with completion settings, or embed other apps directly into teacher-created assignments. The assignment creation options are limited. Teachers can only choose from creating an assignment (usually a link with directions), a material (usually a doc/slide/website, etc), a question, and a quiz. With gamification taking on a new lens in education, there really isn't any way to use gamification elements with Google Classroom. There isn't any way to create Individual learning paths, or use badges and micro-credentials within Classroom. Outside programs would have to be used. Read full review Tech support seemed good but our main issue was never resolved. We received attention and someone was working on our issue, but they could never figure out why our student count was off for 1 grade level even though they said our data looked great. The customized reports were powerful, but there was so much to learn for the average administrative user, like a principal, to get the detailed data they need. You would have to have a dedicated person to create customized reports. At some point, our representative just stopped calling and there was no further contact. Then our rep left the company and the new rep only sent one email notifying us of the change. That was almost a year ago. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability This is only a product I would recommend to a humanities teacher. Math and science teachers cannot use this product the same way that I can as an English teacher. It is great for word process and for reading, but unable to handle the demands of math and science. Therefore, I would highly recommend this product to English or Social Studies teachers, but NOT math or science teachers
Read full review Illuminate DnA is a very usable system. A few items to learn and set up can be a bit time-consuming. However, once set up it is easy to use and powerful for a school that staff can master quickly. It has more features then we actually use but I hope we will over time.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Our issue was never resolved so that we could use the software to produce accurate reports. Their tech department looked into the issue several times and could never figure out why our student was off and then they just closed the case. They confirmed we were performing the correct steps to load the data and they confirmed our data looked accurate. Great, but again why was our student count off?
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Illuminate DnA offers more flexibility and additional features that our previous Data Director system offered. We were looking for a system that offered an online assessment portal and the ability to create elementary standard-based report cards when we selected the illuminate DnA software. We were impressed with the ability to easily create custom reports and liked the comprehensive student profile page.
Read full review Scalability It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review Better handle on student achievement. Clarity around achievements on specific standards. Read full review ScreenShots