Google Drive shared student folders created with Doctopus

Some teachers find it useful to create a shared Google Drive folder for each student. Both the student and teacher have full access to the folder and anything saved there, but other students in the class do not have access. Doctopus is a Google Sheets Add-On that will create a bunch of these folders in bulk if you supply student names and email addresses.

• Outline of steps required to create folders using Doctopus: Create student Google folders using Doctopus handout

An optional feature for sending documents

The Doctopus Add-on also allows bulk sending of a Google Drive document to each student's individual folder so that each student has his or her own copy of the document to edit. The teacher maintains access to that document too and can see an overview of work completed by all students for that assignment. If you want to do this but do not need each student to have an individual class folder shared with the teacher, you should use Google Classroom for sending and managing Google documents in this way. It's interface is more intuitive, and it supports many of the document sharing features of Doctopus. The most notable exceptions are creating the shared folder and displaying document statistics for a particular assignment.

Official Doctopus documentation

• Doctopus at New Visions Cloudlab - current official site
• old site - in case something is missing from the site above

How to update the roster spreadsheet referenced in the outline above

(This information is primarily for Computer Services staff.)

• There is a My DE list that was used to create an export (CSV) by importing it the Google sheet referenced on the handout above. This allows anyone in the Computer Services department to update student names and email addresses:
  • Student Course Rosters, sem 1 - Link may not always work, but this list is shared in My DE such that anyone with a Teacher role can run or copy it. Anyone with Teacher role can find it in My DE under Resources > Lists.