Google Chat is an underutilized feature of Google Workspace for education. I wish more schools would use it! Sometimes it is easier to send a quick question via chat than the cumbersome process of drafting and sending an email. Chat also makes it much easier to share and organize documents.

There are lots of opinions about enabling Google Chat for students, which I completely understand.

Benefits of Google Chat:

• Simplified communication between teachers and students
• Teaches students a modern form of communication
• Makes mass communication easier
• Enable more seamless collaboration between teachers and students

Downsides of enabling Google Chat

• Can distract students from their assigned work
• Bullying and inappropriate communication
• Another thing to monitor/track
• Can overwhelm teachers if they aren’t familiar and comfortable communicating via chat.

While chat offers many benefits, it also comes with potential drawbacks. Fortunately, the Google Admin Console provides comprehensive controls that let you tailor the chat experience to your district’s needs.

Let’s take a look at three different approaches to enabling chat for students in your district.

Option 1: Enable Google chat for students

This is pretty straight forward. Just enable chat for your students organizational units. Students can chat with their teachers and with one another. There are a few additional settings you should probably configure. These policies can be found by visiting Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Google Chat.

• Chat history: all chat conversations are logged in Google Vault provided that chat history is enabled. I recommend Configuring this policy so that it can’t be disabled by staff or students. All conversations are on the record.
• External chat settings: in most cases, you probably want to restrict external chat conversations for students. They can chat with teachers and fellow students, but not individuals from outside of the domain.
• Content reporting: this premium feature allows a user to report a chat as inappropriate or troublesome. These reports are sent to the alert center where they can be reviewed by an IT Administrator. Note: this feature requires an EDU Plus subscription.

Option 2: Teacher managed chats

This option prevents students from chatting with one another, but allows teachers to open up a thread for their class, if desired. To configure this policy, ENABLE chat for your student organizational unit. Next, visit Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Google Chat > Chat and space restrictions.

By enabling the chat and space restriction, students won’t be able to create new threads or spaces, but they will be able to respond. This effectively requires teachers to initiate a thread before chat can be used.

Tip: a “space” is a group chat conversation. It will be easiest for teachers to create a new class space to communicate with students rather than trying to manage individual conversations with each student.

Note: teachers will need to actively delete/archive threads and spaces in order to prevent students from using old conversations for non-instructional purposes.

Option 3: One-way messaging with Google Chat

If you aren’t interested in enabling chat for your students, you can still take advantage of a special announcement feature that allows designated space admins to send messages, but space members are unable to reply. 

Here’s how to set up an announcement-only chat experience: 

1. Make sure that the Google Chat services is enabled for your users.
2. Within the Google Chat configuration page, visit “chat and space restrictions” and apply the restriction to your student OUs.
3. Create a new Space (from Gmail or Chat) and click the “announcements” option. 
4. Designate space admins who can post and invite your student groups

Setting up an announcement only space

The announcement feature must be enabled when a space is initially created. You can not change this setting once enabled. Only space managers are able to send messages to the space. 

The ability to reply to announcements is ENABLED by default. You can disable replies in the settings for the space. Emoji reactions can not be disabled. 

Adding your “all student” Google group is the easiest way to get all of your students into the announcement space. They do not need to accept an invitation. Managers must be added individually and then promoted to manager. 

Finding the right approach

Every district has unique needs and perspectives on the use of technology in the classroom. The Google Admin console provides lots of controls to create a custom set of policies that work for your district.

Each week I send out a free newsletter for IT admins focused on helping you identify the right policies for your district. Join more than 3,000 IT admins as we try to master the admin console!