New Google Meet tools to improve moderation, engagement in remote learning environment

New Delhi: Search engine giant Google has announced that it is launching new features for its video calling app Meet to help educators boost interactivity with students.

“Meet features that will be launching later this year to help educators improve moderation and engagement in remote or hybrid learning environments,” Arpit Guglani, Product Manager, Google Meet, wrote in a Google blog.

New moderation features for G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education users will give educators more control over how to run their virtual classes. All these features will be rolling out later this year.

“First off, we’re making it easier to manage meeting attendees. When someone asks to join a meeting (or “knocks”), they won’t be able to knock again after being ejected from a meeting, and a knock will no longer show up after a moderator rejects it twice. Plus, we’re updating the knocking interface to make knocks less intrusive for educators. Moderators will also be able to end the meeting for all participants, ensuring no students linger after the teacher has left. And we’ll soon block anonymous attendees from joining any Education meetings by default, though schools will be able to opt-in to allow anonymous participants,” the blog said.

Google said it will enable students and educators to blur out their surroundings or replace their background, with presets or uploaded images (with admin controls to disable this functionality), to them feel more comfortable while on video from their homes.

Google will also release additional moderation features to give educators full control of their meetings, such as the ability to mute all participants at the same time, disable in-meeting chat for participants, and restrict who can present, later this year.

“We’ll also provide a setting that requires that the moderator join before the meeting can begin. You'll hear more from us on these new features in the coming months,” Google said.

Google is releasing a hand raising feature to make meetings flow more smoothly and an integrated collaborative whiteboard to help teachers and students share their ideas more naturally. In addition, a larger tiled view will allow them to display up to 49 participants at once. Google is also launching closed captions in additional languages to make lessons more accessible.