New features make it easier to manage meetings in Google Classroom

To prevent unintended participants from joining the meetings, a new feature has been added that requires guests, not on the class roster, to “ask to join” and be admitted by the teacher before they can participate.

Google has added several new features to Google Meet in Classroom that not only make it easer to manage meetings but also help prevent unintended meeting participants from joining meetings, making them run smoothly and securely.

With this update, students can now easily join and teachers can manage Class Meet link from the class stream. Secondly, students will be directed to a waiting room until a teacher has officially joined the class Meet link.

To prevent unintended participants from joining the meetings, a new feature has been added that requires guests, not on the class roster, to “ask to join” and be admitted by the teacher before they can participate.

Now, designated co-teachers for a class will automatically be co-hosts in the meeting, enabling co-hosts to start the meeting with the same Meet link without the class teacher needing to be present.

While any co-teacher is automatically going to be recognized as a co-host at time of Meet link generation, if a co-teacher is added or removed after link generation, then the co-teacher’s co-host status won't automatically be updated.Google is working on a new functionaly that auto-updates the host status. The change is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.

For Workspace admins, Google Meet must be turned on for these features to be available in Google Classroom.

The new set of features are gradually rolling out to both Rapid Release and scheduled Release domains and may take up to 15 days to be fully visible. They will be available as a core service to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus while for Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, the new features will be available as an additional service.