topic Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats in Peer-Peer Topics

Prevent students from creating group Chats

Akaas — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 13:33:02 GMT

Is there anyone who knows if Google Workspace Education Team is working on some function to handle the Chat-funktion more in Google Workspace? Today students can use chat just as they want and create Goup-chats and spaces, and we find this to open up for bullying and other conversations that shouldn't be in Google Chat.

It would be nice if the function gave us an opportunity to block Students from Creating Group-chats but the opportunity for a teacher to invite students to a Group Chat and Spaces.

1-1-conversations student to student is ok, but if the students want a space or a Group chat the teacher should have to invite the students, that would be a slick nice to have feature.

If this question shouldn't be here you can delete the thread or just inform me where i can put in some kind of request.

Kind regards!
André

Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats

Kim_Nilsson — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 14:51:01 GMT

There is no setting to block students from creating Spaces.

If you allow Chat, they can create Spaces.

Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats

Kim_Nilsson — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 14:53:35 GMT

Feature Ideas are posted over on Google Cloud Community here. You have to apply to join.

But I will also flag this to our in-house Googler, @Kristal

This should, of course (!), be an admin setting.

Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats

Kristal — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:52:28 GMT

Let me raise this to the Workspace team and get back to you.

Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats

Aengevold — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 20:00:21 GMT

We currently have Chat turned off for students and if teachers need/want to use a chat function in their class they can do that through Hapara.

Re: Prevent students from creating group Chats

Kristal — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 20:52:55 GMT

I was able to locate this information in the Google Workspace updates:

Admins can now set the default access for new spaces and who can find them by defining the appropriate target audiences. While creating topic-based conversations that can be shared more broadly within an organization fosters collaboration and helps build community, there may still be instances where an organization may wish to target which group or audience can discover or join a space. With additional admin controls, admins can help users discover and join relevant conversations to encourage collaboration more effectively.

Getting started

Admins: The creation of “Discoverable” spaces will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Google Chat sharing settings.

More info can be found here: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/06/admin-controls-for-discoverable-spaces-in-google-chat.html#:~:text=Why%20it%20matters,to%20encourage%20collaboration%20more%20effectively.

It looks like there are ways to control some aspects of Chat, like who can add Google Groups to Spaces. The admin can set the default for new spaces and define more granule target audiences for Discoverable Spaces, but there's currently no way for admins to disable creating Spaces.

If this doesn't solve the original question, please submit a feature request through the Admin Console.

Best ~ Kristal