Classroom helps students and teachers organize assignments, boost collaboration, and foster better communication. If you have a Google Workspace administrator account, you can set up Classroom for your institution in your Admin console.
1. Turn on Classroom
Classroom is turned on by default. If Classroom was turned off, you can turn it back on.
- In your Admin console, click Apps
Google WorkspaceClassroom.
- If you don’t see this option, click Additional AppsGoogle WorkspaceClassroom.
- Click Edit ServiceOn for everyone.
2. Give access to teachers and students
When users sign in to Classroom for the first time, they identify as teachers or students. Users who identify as teachers are automatically added to your organization’s Classroom Teachers group. As a Google Workspace administrator, you verify that the correct users identified as teachers, and give them access to the Classroom features they need. Also, you set the teacher permissions for your domain.
- In a browser window, open your organization’s Classroom Teachers group.
- On the left, click MembersJoin requests.
- Next to a user’s name, check the boxclick Approve applicant or Reject applicant.
Warning: To ensure that teachers can continue using Classroom, don't remove the Classroom Teachers group. If you remove it, an empty group is recreated, users have to reidentify, and you have to reverify teachers.
For more details, go to Verify teachers and set permissions.
Import an exiting list of teachers into Classroom
If you already have groups for all the teachers or staff in your domain, you can add those groups to the Classroom Teachers group. You can also add groups with a sync tool, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) or Google School Directory Sync (GSDS).
If you use GCDS or GSDS, you should also manually exclude the Classroom teachers group from any synchronizations.
Manage permissions for your teachers and students
Classroom uses organizational units to apply different settings to sets of users or Chrome devices. We recommend putting teachers and students in separate organizational units so you can grant certain permissions to teachers, such as starting a video meeting, and not to students.
Note: If you haven’t set up organizational units, all users are placed in the same organizational unit by default.
Control who can join classes
3. Turn on video meetings and other features
You can turn on additional features, such as class video meetings, email notifications, and guardian summaries, so teachers can use them in their classes. To prevent student misuse, we recommend you turn on video meeting creation privileges for teachers and staff only.
Allow Google Meet for class video meetings
- In your Admin console, go to AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Meet.
- At the top, verify that Meet is ON for everyone (enabled for both staff and students). If it's not enabled, follow these steps:
- Next to Service status, click the Down arrow
and select ON for everyone.
- Click Save.
- Configure which users can start a video meeting and other settings:
- From the Admin console, go to AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Meet.
- Click Meet settings.
- (Optional) To apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected.
- (Recommended) To assign meeting creation privileges to faculty and staff only, select a child organizational unit or a configuration group. If you use Classroom and have verified teachers, you can select your Classroom Teachers group.
- Next to Video calling, at the top right of the gray box, click Edit
.
- Check the Let users place video and voice calls box.
- Click Save.
Allow Classroom email notifications for teachers and students
You can allow teachers and students to receive Classroom email notifications, even if you don’t allow emails for your school or organization. Teachers can turn notifications on or off for their class. Email notifications include invitations to join classes and updates on classwork.
For more details, go to Allow Classroom email notifications for teachers and students.
Send parents or guardians their student’s performance summary
Guardians can keep track of their student’s classroom progress through guardian email summaries. The emails summarize information about the student’s classes and work. See an example of a guardian email summary.
As the Google Workspace administrator, you can allow guardian email summaries for your school or district, and let teachers invite or remove guardians.
- In your Admin console, click AppsGoogle WorkspaceClassroom.
- If you don’t see this option, click AppsAdditional Google servicesClassroom.
- Click General settings.
- Under Guardian access, click Allow parents and guardians to access Classroom information.
Note: If you allowed students in whitelisted domains to join classes in your domain, the whitelisted domains must also enable guardian email summaries. If email summaries are off, teachers can't invite guardians for students in that domain. Learn more about whitelisting a domain.
For more details, go to Manage guardians in your domain.
Train teachers to use Classroom
Google for Education provides teachers with the knowledge they need to be successful. Resources include:
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