The “Visit a Class” feature for Google Classroom provides temporary course access to substitute teachers, administrators, and learning support specialists.

No longer do these individuals need to be added as co-teachers which results in an overwhelming amount of emails and notifications. This helpful feature fosters collaboration and streamlines classroom support, benefiting teachers, students, and administrators alike.

Potential Uses:

• Student support: special education teachers and learning coaches can quickly access a student’s courses to verify assignment details and deadlines.
• Continuity of learning: Provide substitute teachers with temporary access to courses when the primary teacher is unavailable.
• On-the-spot support for teachers: Receive immediate assistance from tech coaches and IT administrators.
• Classroom observations: administrators can visit a class during a walk-through to better understand the context of a lesson.
• Parent support: school administrators can better respond to parent concerns by accessing course instructions, grades, and teacher communication.

Requirements

There are a few requirements that must be in place before you can use the “visit a class” feature.

• Google Workspace for Education Plus license (not available for fundamentals or teaching & learning)
• Create a special role in the admin console for authorized users.

Related post: Google Workspace for Education: Upgrade options

Creating a Custom Admin Role:

Because the “visit a class” feature provides access to all courses within your domain, a special admin role must be created and assigned before a user can access the courses of other teachers.

1. Sign in to the Google Admin console (super admin access required)
2. Navigate to Admin roles from the home page.
3. Click Create new role and provide a name (e.g., “Classroom observers”).
4. Search for “Manage classes” in the list of permissions

Note: there is an additional setting that will allow users to view analytic data on student performance. You may wish to create a second role for school administrators that allows “manage classes” and analytic access.

Assigning the Role to Users:

The next step is to assign this role to users or groups who need the ability to visit a classroom. This can be done through the role area of the admin console, or by opening a user profile and updating their permissions.

Note: you can now assign roles to security groups which simplifies permission management. Roles can only be assigned to security groups, a newer feature for the admin console. The video below will explain how to set up and use security groups.

How to use this feature:

Once a user has the appropriate role assigned to their account, they can visit the class of any student or teacher by following these steps:

1. Go to the Google Classroom homepage.
2. Look for “Visit a class” at the top of the page.
3. Search for the teacher or student you want to visit.
4. Select the class you want to visit and choose the reason for your visit.
5. Click Visit class to temporarily access the classroom.

Note: Whenever someone uses the “Visit a Class” feature to enter a classroom, they are required to explain the purpose for their visit which is sent to the primary teacher by email. This transparency helps maintain communication and collaboration. Visitors have access for 2 hours after which they will need to submit a new visit request.

With “Visit a Class” and these simple steps, authorized personnel can leverage temporary classroom access, fostering a collaborative and supportive learning environment.