CourseWork integration

Developers can use Google Classroom API to interact with coursework in Google Classroom. An application that uses the API in this way is referred to as a CourseWork integration.

Key Point: A CourseWork integration allows developers to programmatically access and modify the state of Google Classroom announcements, course materials, assignments, and student submissions. Choose this path if you need a low-cost way to push your content into Classroom.

This integration path is commonly used to create and grade assignments with links to resources outside of Classroom. It provides more developer access to coursework management as compared to Classroom Share buttons.

How it works

The core feature of a CourseWork integration is the creation and management of assignments, announcements, and course materials using Classroom API.

One example of a common user journey enabled by a CourseWork integration is to allow teachers to discover, assign, and grade content from within your website or application:

1. A teacher user signs in to your website.
2. The teacher finds or creates content that they want to share with their class. The teacher clicks a button on your website to send this content to Google Classroom.
3. Your application issues a request to courses.courseWork.create. The request contains a CourseWork object in its body that contains:
   • The destination course ID.
   • The title of the assignment.
   • The text description for the assignment.
   • A link Material with the URL to the content selected by the teacher.
   • Optionally, the maximum score attainable for the selected content.
4. A new assignment appears in Classroom with a link attachment. The link refers to the URL specified in the create request. See Figure 1 for an example.
5. A new column for the assignment also appears in the Classroom gradebook, including the maximum score if provided.
6. Students receive the assignment and click the link Material to open the provided URL in a new tab and view or complete the content on your website. Optionally, provide controls for the student to turn in the assignment.
7. Optionally, issue a request to courses.courseWork.studentSubmissions.modifyAttachments to add attachments to a student submission, such as a Google Drive file or link Material that points to the student's work on your website.
8. Optionally, issue a request to courses.courseWork.studentSubmissions.patch to set the student's grade for the assignment.

Figure 1. Teacher view when editing an assignment with link Material created by a CourseWork integration.

Alternatively, you could call courses.announcements.create or courses.courseWorkMaterials.create to create an announcement or course material instead of an assignment. See the Create & manage coursework and Set & update grades pages for detailed descriptions of the relevant Classroom API actions.

Considerations

Key Point: There are some important limitations to a CourseWork integration. If these prevent you from realizing your product, consider building a Google Classroom add-on instead.

Keep the following in mind before deciding if a CourseWork integration is the right choice for your product needs.

• You need to authorize the user and prompt for their consent. You're making API requests on the user's behalf. This means, for example, that you can't create coursework in any Google Classroom course; you can only create coursework in courses that the authorized user teaches.
• You need a way for the user to select a course to receive the content. Consider using courses.list to get a list of the courses taught by the user, then allow the user to select one or more of the courses from the list.
• When a user clicks a link Material in Classroom, the link opens in a new tab. Your server won't receive any information from Classroom when the URL opens.
• A teacher can modify or delete the coursework independently of the developer. This means that a developer's knowledge of the coursework might become out of date. If you need to be aware of changes in coursework, consider setting up push notifications for coursework changes.
• A teacher can create coursework in the Classroom UI with pasted links to URLs on your website. Coursework created in this manner are solely owned by the teacher, so you won't be able to view, modify, or set submission grades using the Classroom API.