Google Classroom Integration Status Update

Google Classroom Integration Status Update

2/2/2021

 

We’ve been making progress on issues with the Google Classroom Integration, and wanted to provide an update.  We also wanted to offer guidance on how best to use our tool.

  1. The existing issue continues to negatively affect users.  We are still receiving notifications for some, but not all, score updates inside Google Classroom.  Customers continue to experience unsynced data within TeacherEase.  If you’d like more context, please see:
    https://www.teacherease.com/app/news/article/Google-Classroom-Sync-Issues-20210128 

  2. At the moment, the best workflow for teachers is to pull scores from Google Classroom using the “Resync Now with Google” button.  If you’re manually grading, we suggest resyncing after entering all scores into Google Classroom.  If Classroom is automatically grading student work, wait to resync until after the assignment is due, when most students have handed in work and scores have been auto-graded.

  3. Be aware that resync is currently a blunt tool.  It pulls all scores, and overwrites any manual updates you’ve made in TeacherEase.  You probably shouldn’t change any scores in TeacherEase if you expect to resync soon (since they’ll be overwritten).

  4. When teachers’ make manual updates to TeacherEase, it’s often for missing work.  We have long offered tools to handle many students with a few clicks.  On “Scores / Comments,” please look for “Mark Blanks Missing” and “Mark Missing Zero” buttons, available by clicking on the assignment name.  You can also access “Mass Edit Scores” from the menu under each assignment.  This should help you in the process (so you don’t need to type in numbers manually).

  5. We received a message from a Google employee that they have “forwarded the issue internally.”  Hopefully this means they are closer to working on the bug that’s affecting our service.  We’d like to give a big “Thanks” to customers who interacted with the Google issue tracker to raise the profile of the issue.  Google is a big company, and I think we should now have the attention of the right people.

While we hope Google will fix the issue that affects us, we are actively working to improve our customers’ user experience.  We released new code last night, and should make a few more releases this week.  Here’s what we’re doing.


  1. Last night’s release implemented better handling of manual score updates in TeacherEase.  

    1. We track when teachers manually update scores in TeacherEase for a linked assignment (which means that TeacherEase and Google Classroom scores are now different).  We can use this information to make better decisions about future changes.

    2. After a manual score change in TeacherEase, if a push notification comes in from Google that causes a score to be changed, we notify the teacher with a newsfeed item.  They are made aware that a manual change was overwritten, and can make modifications, if desired.

    3. We removed the confirmation popup when entering scores.  All assignments will stay linked by default, and can be unlinked on the Google Assignments page, if desired.

    4. We added “Mass Edit Scores” back to “Scores / Comments.”  This should help teachers manage the state of many students with a few clicks.

  2. Next we plan to extend this functionality to “Resync Now,” which currently overwrites all manual changes made in TeacherEase (and has been causing heartburn for many users).  When resyncing an assignment that has manual score updates in TeacherEase, we’ll look at timestamps on the scores in each system and keep the most recent update (either the manually entered score in TeacherEase or the score in Google Classroom).  This should prevent overwriting new/good scores with old/outdated ones.

  3. Once “Resync Now” is working better with respect to overwrites, we’re going to run it as a service in the background.  We’ll automatically scan Google Classroom for score updates in active assignments.  While it won’t be as timely as properly functioning push notifications, over time we should be able to get all scores pulled over reliably.

  4. We also plan to pull in “missing” and “late” statuses from Google Classroom into TeacherEase.  That should reduce the data entry workload for teachers.

 

Thanks for your patience.  We apologize for the inconvenience these issues have caused.  Hopefully we’re not too far from a good solution.

 

 

The Common Goal Team