Google is rolling out a handy new tool for Workspace admins who use Google Meet to keep in touch with staff. Starting today, admins can see a record of participant bandwidth during meetings . So if you were hoping to fake a bad connection to get out of a meeting early, prepare to be called out.
The feature that lets me see the bandwidth of a student has been in Zoom for a while. It comes to Google Meet now.
I used to watch the bandwidth stats on our cyber campus and would proactively message the kids and parents for suggestions and to help them. I will say that when you know they don't have a bandwidth problem, it still becomes a “he said /she said” because so many don't understand bandwidth data.
I've seen kids dropping 10% of the conversation of a class hang on and still ace the course. I've also seen students with great connections seemingly hang up out of the blue. In the end, you have to trust parents and students. I would usually say things like, “let me look at the bandwidth data.” I would then share a layman's explanation of what I saw and ask for more information about where the student was, etc.
Sometimes a student moving closer to the router, or the router coming out of the closet and being put on a higher shelf has made a huge difference. I would say that 90% of the time the bandwidth data made a positive difference in my ability to help students. The other 10% of the time, it didn't matter what the data was, the only data that mattered was that a student wasn't in zoom and the parent wasn't able to monitor the situation. In this case, I always deferred to just giving students the benefit of the doubt and moved on. It did give me the luxury of knowing it wasn't on the end of the video conferencing tool and I could move on without worrying.
I do hope these stats will be helpful for those using Google Meet for distance learning.
Also remember, there are things we cannot know about the other side of a connection but we can use this to be helpful, not punitive. Nobody needs that.
Source: You can no longer fake a bad connection to get out of Google Meet calls
See also: Bandwidth is the Library Card of the Information Age
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