Google Classroom as a tool for enhancing the individual responsibility of the students under the conditions of distance education

Problem statement

The acute military conflict in Ukraine challenges many spheres of public life, including education. Distance education, having developed during the global pandemic of COVID-19, is currently almost the only means of carrying out the educational process. This situation brings forward the issue of its constant improvement in Ukraine to ensure overcoming the negative impact of the military conflict on the quality level of higher education and students' competitiveness in the global labor market [7, 8]. Facilitation of active interaction of students and educators within the learning process, provision of opportunities for efficient independent work with feedback, and objective assessment of acquired knowledge and professional skills require special public attention.

In this regard, the following issues are gaining particular relevance: choosing accessible and easyto-use information and communication technologies for distance learning, ensuring the creation, rapid distribution, and storage of educational materials, active communication between the students and the educator, and establishing permanent educational support and guidance.

Nowadays, one of the most popular platforms for distance education of students is Google Classroom (https://classroom.google.com). Its accessibility and free use allow students to organize the effective interaction of all agents of the educational process, structure the educational material, and ensure the comprehensive assessment of the learning achievements of students [2, 3, 6].

In the context of enhancing the individual responsibility of the educational process agents in the conditions of distance education, higher education institutions are changing approaches to the organization of the educational process and shifting the emphasis towards the student's personality and the level of their individual responsibility as vital factors for ensuring sustainability and effectiveness of today's higher education. These challenges actualize the issue of finding or creating such an educational environment or resource that would give impetus to the development of individual responsibility of students. Scientific research and the latest pedagogical experience indicate that the instrumental functionality of Google Classroom has the potential to enhance the level of individual responsibility of higher education students.

The purpose of the article

The paper aims to substantiate the use of Google Classroom as a tool for enhancing the individual responsibility of students under the conditions of distance education.

Analysis of recent research and publications

Many researchers, in particular A. Mergler, L. Orban Lembryk, V. Ponomariov, studying the nature of individual responsibility of the individual, emphasize that any human relationship is subject-oriented.

In addition to the subject of responsibility, namely, the student, there must be another agent to whom or to which a person must be responsible to. Under the conditions of distance learning, this can be the so-called instance of responsibility. L. Orban Lembryk argues about the existence of specific instances of human responsibility, which a person reports to on his activities, actions, and behavior. The scholar characterizes the instance of responsibility as a body that evaluates and controls the activity of the subject of responsibility and, if necessary, applies the necessary sanctions. The functions of the instance of responsibility are supervision, control, correction, sanctioning of the behavior of the subject of responsibility, and further stimulation to bear responsibility [4].

We share the opinion of many researchers that the establishment of such instances of responsibility during student training in higher education will enhance their level of individual responsibility for their education. The application of modern ICT can ensure the implementation of the functions listed above, as ICT tools can serve as instances of responsibility [10, 12,13].

Among the wide range of educational platforms available on the modern ICT market, many domestic researchers, in particular S. Antoshchuk [1], Voytovych [3], Yu. Bogachkov [2], P. Ukhan [2], V. Khrypun [6], O. Chehratova [8, 9], etc. emphasize the efficiency of Google Classroom tools, which possess the potential to serve as accountability bodies for higher education students. Scholars emphasize several positive qualities of this educational platform: its availability and being charge free; the possibility of self-registration; availability of a unified Google account, which simplifies access to all services; availability of convenient and handy functionality; accessibility from any digital device connected to the Internet, etc. [11, 13].

Foreign scholars, namely Maman, H. Baharun, M. Rohman & F. Baskoro argue that Google Classroom possesses huge educational potential which can be utilized to facilitate and improve the process of delivering material to students. The researchers highlight the fact that the task assignment tools available in Google Classroom can enhance students' personal learning responsibility by generating automatic copies of tasks individually assigned by name for each subscriber of the course [11].

M. Tyshchenko conducted a comparative analysis of the organizational and functional features of Google Class and Kiddom, which are being used by teachers of different educational institutions in Ukraine according to statistical data. The researcher notes that it will be more appropriate to use Google Classroom since it has the essential functional kit necessary to conduct and maintain distance learning education. Although, according to M. Tyshchenko, the lack of experienced educators in using the complete functional range of Google Classroom may be a drawback. The scientists admit that this issue could be resolved by conducting educational seminars for the teaching staff or by encouraging teachers' self-education using web technologies [5].

In this context, a significant contribution to the implementation of Google Classroom in the sphere of distance education in Ukraine was performed by the scientists of the University of educational management of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine. They developed a program to improve the digital qualification of scientific and pedagogical staff of higher education institutions. The educators designed a course focused on using Google Workspace for education services for conducting distance and blended learning [1].

To help Ukrainian educators acquire the necessary digital competencies and master new educational tools, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Ukraine together with Google is providing training by developing a series of seminars and sharing materials on the use of Google Workspace for educational purposes. For instance, their free online course Google Digital Tools for Education is available during the 2022-2023 academic year for educators of all levels.

Presentation of the material

The Google Class platform allows educators to structure the educating course by sections, define their topics, create a calendar plan, and specify the terms of studying the relevant material, along with the terms of submitting learning assignments. Within the course, educators can upload learning assignments for specific academic groups, send notifications and initiate discussions (Fig. 1). At the same time, the assignments submitted by the students are automatically organized into the structure of folders and files on Google Drive. Moreover, educators are enabled to monitor the task submission progress or check whether a particular assignment has been submitted.

Figure 1 Creating assignments within an educational course in Google classroom

Figure 2 Setting deadlines for the completion of assigned tasks

An essential advantage of Google Classroom is the possibility to integrate Google Classroom and Google Drive. When creating a specific course, a folder with educational materials is automatically created for the educator on Google Drive, after which such a folder also appears automatically on students' Google Drive.

Another advantage is productive and fast communication between agents of the educational process, which is the key to constructive feedback. It is worth noting that messaging inside the course can be public and private. Furthermore, the information security of the platform is ensured by the possibility of creating a separate access code for each newly designed course. The code can be used by an academic group or a private individual for prompt and convenient course subscriptions.

Students, in turn, create their own accounts, through which they perform educational tasks, exchange educational materials, project an individual educational trajectory, monitor their own educational progress and the progress of the academic group, add comments and maintain communication with educators.

When clicking on a particular assignment, the student can see which task needs immediate submission. It is worth emphasizing that the information about the submitted assignments is constantly updated. Also, this service provides an opportunity to add comments on the checked assignments. Furthermore, Google Classroom provides educators with the possibility to set deadlines for the completion of assigned tasks (Fig. 2).

The above-mentioned functionality of Google

Classroom brings about a significant component of the external structure of an individual's responsibility - its time perspective. According to scientists, it has two aspects: retrospective (responsibility for past actions) and prospective (responsibility for future actions). The transition of an individual from retrospective to prospective responsibility is a progressive step in the development of responsibility level. At this point the formation of responsibility as a personal quality of an individual takes place.

The vector of development of students' time responsibility when using Google Classroom is the utilization of Google Calendar when assigning tasks via Google Classroom. This service is a crucial means of setting the terms of students' task fulfilment and a mechanism of improving a significant soft skill of the future professional - time management.

The use of Google Calendar allows you to plan and set deadlines for completing educational tasks; set reminders; create “thematic agendas”; make a list of tasks, etc. The function of joint use of Google Calendar provides opportunities for joint planning of the work of the educator and students (Fig. 3).

An additional advantage of setting up Google Calendar is the ability to control the course load. Teachers who have access to all Google Classroom calendars can monitor the volume of tasks for each day and monitor the implementation of various types of control and prevent student overload.

When using Google Calendar as a time management tool, students can build their own time management trajectory: plan their workload for the week, set deadlines for tasks, and include personal plans and events in their work plan.

Also, among the functions of Google Calendar, there is the possibility of setting up an automatic e-mail delivery of the daily schedule with tasks and events for the day (Fig. 4). This will act as an additional instance of personal responsibility for the student and will additionally contribute to effective time management in the distance learning process.

Conclusions and recommendations

Having considered the use of Google Classroom to maintain a sustainable process of distance education we concluded that it is an optimal digital platform convenient for the use of both educators and students. Its functional potential provides vectors for increasing the student's individual responsibility by emphasizing the processes of time management and action planning, the result of which will be the processes of self-reflection, self-correction, and further self-improvement. The perspective of the research is the further consideration of the functionality of Google Classroom, as well as similar educational platforms that may have the potential to enhance the learning responsibility of students.

Figure 3 The use of Google Calendar for setting task deadlines

Figure 4 Setting up an automatic e-mail delivery of the daily schedule with tasks and events for the day

References