Student Work in Google Drive
Student work is saved in your Google Drive when you use Google Classroom. This makes is super easy to have students comment on each others work.
Create an Assignment
In Google Classroom create a new assignment for peer comments. This assumes you already have an assignment where students created something on Google Apps. Click on the Google Drive icon and browse the Google Classroom class assignment folder to add student work. TIP: You can hold down the shift key to select multiple student documents at once.
Students Can Edit File
The default when you add files to an assignment in Google Classroom is “Students can view file.” Switch this to “Students can edit file.” This allows all the students in the class to comment on the work of other students.
Sidenote
Vocabulary matters. It helps us set a mindset for our classes. Please join me in suggesting to Google Classroom that they change “Students can edit file” to “Students can collaborate on file.” It’s less confusing as to what it does and it helps us to remember that what makes Google Apps and Google Classroom amazing is the ability to collaborate. Click the question mark icon in the bottom left of Google Classroom to “Send feedback.”
Edit not Comment
Google Classroom does not have the ability to add a file as “Students can comment on file.” That is fine, you do not need that. Let the students have edit access, it is risk-free. With edit access, the students can insert comments.
Students Deleting Student Work
A concern that students may “mess up” another students work is easy easy to deal with. Google Docs revision history makes this a non-issue. If a student’s work is accidentally “messed up” use the File menu to choose “See revision history.” Locate the last revision where the document owner edited the file and “restore this version.”
Google Classroom Peer Comments
Students can access peer work easily in the Google Classroom Stream. Students should insert comments into the peer document. Since Google Apps does not have a save button, students simply close the peer document after making comments.
3 thoughts on “Google Classroom: Quick Share and Peer Comment”
I am doing an assignment in slides where I want students to work in pairs. I am using Google Classroom to host the assignment. Can I make one template and choose pairs to assign it to, or do I need to make one template for each pair?
You can. I would make a copy for each student. Tell the partner to click on file, open it, click on title and renames it DELETE. Close it. Then the other person clicks on the blue share button and adds email of partner. Adds partner name to the file title.
Seems like there is nothing to TURN IN although students could TURN IN to let the teacher know they are done commenting? How do you handle this?