Leveraging Google Sites

Google Sites is a website builder that works well for presenting simple information. The learning curve is relatively quick compared to other site builders. Google Sites ad-free and is included with your Champlain Google account – and it’s also included with your students’ Google accounts, too. That means you not only can use Sites yourself, but ask your students to use it as part of assignments – in some cases, a simple website is a great alternative to a paper or Slides presentation. Learn more about how to use Sites.

Sample Uses of Sites

You can use Sites to create new ways for students to collect, curate, and share their work. If you have students create or collaborate on their own Sites, learning to use the platform is a valuable professionalization opportunity.

• An online gallery showing the creative works of a group of students or a class section
• A digital portfolio in which individuals or small groups of students collect and curate their written or artistic work over the course of a semester 
• A way to collect documentation showing progress in project-based learning
• A digital poster session to present research findings. This can be a nice alternative to the conventional research paper and presentation formats because it allows direct linking to sources and the posting of multimedia content related to the research topic.
• A venue for collaborating on a project (even if the final presentation format is not a Site)
• A “knowledge base” or “wiki” on the topic of study for the course, to which every student is expected to contribute.

These uses of Sites are particularly helpful for remote or hybrid teaching, but they are also great options for in-person classes.

Advantages

Google Sites integrates extremely well with other G-Suite applications like Docs, Slides, YouTube, etc., which makes it a great choice for many academic uses.

Sites also has many of the same sharing settings that other G-Suite applications have, which is handy because it allows you to make a basic website that is public, limited to the Champlain community only, or limited to just a few select users in the community. This increases its potential as an academic tool because it can serve as a private digital gallery or portfolio that is shared only with the student(s) whose work is in the portfolio and you as the instructor. 

Note that Sites can be a great supplement to your Canvas course, but we do not recommend putting things you would otherwise put on Canvas on a Site. That may be confusing to students.