How to record remote lessons on Hangouts Meet

With Hangouts Meet, you can also do video lessons with Google Classroom. Here's how to record lessons with Google Meet

If Zoom and Microsoft Teams seem to have benefited a lot from the pandemic in the business world, Google Meet is one of the most popular platforms lately in the e-learning field. Schools and training centers are in fact using it for distance learning, especially because it's possible to use Meet within another Google product: Classroom, Big G's specific platform for teachers.

The potential of Meet, however, goes far beyond the simple videoconference or online lesson: it is in fact possible, if you transmit from a G Suite Enterprise or G Suite Enterprise for Education account, to allow students to record lessons and then watch them later. This feature is very useful, for example, to review a lesson or if the teacher chooses to spend a few hours correcting homework together (and live on Meet) with his students. Students who, shortly after the end of the video call, will be able to review the most complex passages and understand even better how to solve, for example, a complex mathematical calculation, or how best to translate a Latin or Greek version. But how to record lessons on Google Meet?

How to record a video lesson on Google Hangouts Meet

Let's start with a very important clarification: only the teacher (or the owner of the premium account who launched the video lesson) can allow students and viewers to review the transmission. It is also necessary to activate the Drive account for each student who wants to review the lesson. Then you need to put all the pupils (or at least the ones you want to allow to watch the recording) in the same organizational unit or in the same configuration group.

Having done all that, now the teacher will have to enter the Google Admin Console by logging in with his administrator account (if he enters with his personal Google account he can't do anything) and then go to Applications > G Suite > Hangouts Meet and Google Hangouts. At this point the teacher/administrator will need to go to Meet Settings, select Recording > Allow users to record their own meetings and then hit Save. If all goes well almost immediately, the users/students will be able to record their lessons online, in some cases it could take up to 48 hours.

Free for all, until September 30

As mentioned above, the ability to record video calls is a premium feature reserved for G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education users. However, remember that Google has offered all G Suite users the premium features until September 30, 2020, to boost smart working and e-learning. After September 30, G Suite Basic, Business, Education and for-profit users will lose the premium features, but already recorded meetings will remain on their Drive accounts.