Google Groups allow groups of people to communicate and collaborate within Google Workspace, e.g., Gmail, Drive, and Calendar.
Types of Google Groups
- College Lists: Mail lists based on institutional reference data used for distributing communications to certain College cohorts, e.g., campus@lafayette.edu (all cohorts) or students@lafayette.edu (students only). Only authorized shared email accounts can post to College lists.
- Course Lists: Mail lists based on Moodle course enrollments used by course members. The names follow the same convention as Moodle, e.g., fys101-01-fall2020@lafayette.edu. All members of a Course list can post to the list. See Google Groups for Courses for more information.
- Ad-hoc Lists: Mail lists created by an individual for personal or group use. The names contain a suffix of “.group”, e.g. applefans.group@lafayette.edu. Permission to post to Ad-hoc lists is determined by the owner/creator of the list.
Google Groups can:
- Function as an email list that distributes messages to members of the group
- Be used to invite members to a Google Calendar event, Google Chat Space, or to share documents or folders in Google Drive
- Function as a web forum where members can communicate with each other by posting to topic threads
- Be used for Q & A sessions where questions are posed and members respond
How Google Groups differ from Contact lists
A contact list is a personal set of email addresses created in Google Contacts and used solely for emailing a cohort of people. Contact lists cannot be shared with others or used outside of Gmail. Google Groups can be made available to others and have features such as conversation history and moderation. They can also be used within other Google Workspace apps such as Drive, Calendar, Chat, and more.