Google Workspace Plus: Powering UofL with New Tools
Coming 8/7/26 for employees, 8/17/26 for students
We are excited to announce the campus-wide deployment of Google’s advanced collaboration tools and Google's premium AI ecosystem.
Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Forms, Gemini, Notebook and more!
Important note on use:
Additional note:
How to Get Started
If you previously had an @louisville.edu Google account, our admins have claimed your email address. On your initial sign in, you will be asked to transfer your previous account (now safe on a temporary address) to either a new Gmail account OR change to a non-Gmail account. Please read all details for both options.
If you have a personal Gmail or Google account, that's cool. Your new UofL account is separate and should be used for university purposes. Each time you log in, you'll be asked which Google account you would like to use.
Navigate to myaccount.google.com and log in with your userID@louisville.edu. You should be automatically transferred to the University of Louisville single-sign-on (SSO) that you are familiar with. Use your university password and, possibly, UL2FCTR/Duo for two-factor.
On first sign-in, your Google Workspace for Education account will ask you to agree to the terms of service, the Google Privacy Policy and service-specific terms. Your use of Google services is also conditioned by University of Louisville policies.
On your myaccount page, the 3x3 dot flavicon in the upper right will show all of your Workspace Tools when clicked.
Navigate to gemini.google.com and log in with your userID@louisville.edu. You should be automatically transferred to the University of Louisville single-sign-on (SSO) that you are familiar with. Use your university password and, possibly, UL2FCTR/Duo for two-factor. You will see a distinct badge indicating your upgraded campus access.
Gemini (core AI) is a general-purpose AI assistant and creative partner. It is best used for brainstorming, drafting text, writing code, generating images and streamlining workflows directly within your Workspace side panels.
Navigate to notebooklm.google.com (Gemini Notebook) to start uploading your source materials and building your personalized notebooks.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) is a source-grounded research & learning assistant. It is best used for uploading dense research, PDFs or lecture notes to synthesize data, generate study guides and create interactive audio/video summaries.
On your myaccount page, the 3x3 dot flavicon in the upper right will show all of your apps when clicked.
Simply open any Google Doc, Slide deck or Sheet and look for the Gemini side panel icon in the top right corner to start collaborating instantly.
How do I?
Higher Education Role-Based Use Cases
For Students: Accelerate Your Learning
Instant Study Guides: Upload your syllabus, lecture notes and reading materials into Gemini Notebook. It will automatically generate summaries, study guides and custom practice quizzes tailored to your coursework.
Contextual Writing Partner: Use Gemini in Google Docs to help outline essays, check for stylistic adjustments and break through writer's block.
Grounded in Facts: Unlike consumer AI chatbots, Gemini Notebook strictly references the materials you upload, providing inline citations so you can easily verify its output.
For Faculty: Reimagine Teaching & Research
Accelerate Literature Reviews: Upload up to 100 academic papers, book chapters or dataset documentation files into a single notebook to instantly track themes, find contradictions or summarize key metrics across multiple sources.
Course Prep & Assessment: Use Gemini in Google Forms to instantly build quizzes or surveys based on a lecture slide deck or PDF document.
Dynamic Visuals: Instantly generate diagrams, custom presentation graphics or short instructional videos to bring complex concepts to life in your lectures.
For Staff & Administration: Streamline Daily Operations
Smart Data Management: Use Gemini in Google Sheets to clean up massive spreadsheets. Enhanced features will automatically categorize text and fill in missing values based on your data patterns.
Instant Executive Summaries: Upload long-form institutional policies, financial reports or vendor contracts into Gemini Notebook to pull immediate bullet points, track strategic implications or generate FAQs.
Drafting & Communication: Speed up your administrative output by using "Help Me Write" to draft program announcements, newsletters or policy updates from rough bullet points.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
All enrolled students, faculty (listed as in an academic appointment in Workday, not emeritus or affiliated), and staff (not contingent or temporary workers) are allowed accounts. Due to our enterprise licensing agreement, individuals falling outside of this list are not eligible.
We understand that data privacy is critical. Because this is a core institutional deployment of Google Workspace Plus, your data is fully protected under our enterprise agreement:
- Total Privacy: Your prompts, uploads and interactions are confidential.
- No Model Training: Google does not use your data, queries or intellectual property to train its public AI models.
- Compliance Ready: UofL's Google environment adheres to strict educational and enterprise data-security standards.
Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Forms, Contacts, Vids, Workspace Studio, Gemini, Gems and Notebook. You also have access to YouTube, News, Translate and Chrome.
We are not turning on Gmail, Calendar, Tasks, Chat, Sites nor Vault. Simply put, this is due to conflicting licensing agreements with our Microsoft products, university communication polices and enterprise security regulations.
If you have a need for something not on either list, please submit a service ticket for Google in our service catalog.
With our Education Plus license, the maximum limit is 500 interactive participants per meeting.
Yes, our knowledge base article outlines how to set up within Outlook.
The data privacy and integration across Workspace tools are the most important differences. Prompts, class data, information and uploaded documents are private to our institution, and your interactions are never used to train Google’s public AI models.
UofL also has access to advance reasoning models and higher usage caps than free consumer products. Our expanded capabilities and education-focused platforms go beyond the everyday tools.
Currently, Gemini offers the basic 3.5 Flash for all-around answers, 3.5 Thinking for more complex problems and 3.1 Pro for advanced math and coding. A Deep Think model is also available but will have a higher compute and token rate.
It is important to choose the right model when working with Gemini but is a balance of fast vs. slow, token usage vs. compute need, and complexity of task required.
Quick Selection Matrix
Model | Best For | Key Prompt Types | Strengths |
|---|---|---|---|
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| Flash-Lite | High-volume, low-latency tasks | Data extraction, simple classification, autocomplete | Ultra-fast execution, minimal token cost |
| Flash | Everyday work, creative drafting, web search synthesis | Summaries, routine emails, quick scripts, brainstorming | Excellent speed-to-quality ratio, handles general tasks cleanly |
| Pro | Complex multi-step logic, long-document analysis, full codebases | Deep technical reporting, multi-file code refactoring, policy analysis | Superior accuracy, high nuance, deep multi-turn instruction following |
| Deep Think | High-difficulty math, hard STEM, competitive coding, formal proofs | Algorithm optimization, complex math proofs, logic puzzle solving | Extended reasoning loop tests edge cases before outputting an answer |
Learning how to use Gemini is the best way to begin. Follow some basic practices to write prompts that are clear, precise in direction and uses relevant key words. Remember to review all results and that you can always refine your prompts or restate in a new chat when the answers are not what you expect.
Yes, UofL’s Gemini retains past chat conversations, allowing users to view past threads and continue prior conversations. The retention timeframe and user-facing chat conversation history is 18 months.
UofL’s Gemini does not have a strict cutoff for information retrieval because it uses real-time, native Google search grounding. Historically, its knowledge extends as far back as recorded human history and scientific archives.
However, depending on the model that you set, the underlying LLM powering your Gemini use has a static training data cutoff date. Depending on the specific model iteration chosen, the static training cutoff ranges from mid-2024 to recent months. When queried about recent events, new updates or current research published past its base cutoff, Gemini will perform a live search to pull new data into the response.
Getting started with Gemini Notebook, an AI-powered research assistant designed to help you refine and organize your ideas, is easy.
Gemini Notebook is a centralized, hallucination-free study or productivity hub that transforms heavy coursework or administrative workloads into accessible, tailored materials. By anchoring its analysis strictly to up to 600 uploaded sources (such as presentations, documents, PDFs and audio recordings) the tool allows you to analyze complex readings with precision while generating instant study guides, one-pagers and structured outlines grounded directly from your materials. Additionally, features like interactive Audio Overviews convert dense texts into engaging, podcast-style discussions perfect for reviewing on the go, helping you streamline your work, master difficult subjects and stay organized.
At UofL, Microsoft’s Copilot free version of Chat is available as part of our Office365 offerings. This includes use of their latest models within our protected Microsoft ecosystem. With web-grounded answers (citations/sources), file upload and document analysis, the chat experience offers basic assistance. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on ($18/month for university employees) provides capabilities inside the Microsoft 365 apps themselves as a university-approved generative AI tool.
We brought Google Workspace plus Gemini and Notebook to UofL to transform how we work, teach and learn. With these “free to UofL community” tools, we hope you supercharge your research, educational materials, studying and administrative workflows using this cutting-edge software, all while keeping our institutional and personal data secure. The embedded Gemini within the Workspace tools allows you to speed up and improve your writing, organize projects and events, and create custom slides. The Drive, Gemini and Notebook are unparalleled for higher education use.
Yes, each user is allotted 20 gigabytes (GB) for storage on their account's instance of Google Drive.
"Quota has been exceeded" is a possibility on UofL’s Google ecosystem.
Users can prevent this by switching to a lower model or unchecking the "Auto" selector for models and choosing one appropriate to each use. If paused, try logging out, clear browser cookies, and log back in to force a fresh entitlement check or reset.
Gemini operates on a compute-based usage system rather than strict message counts. Your limits factor in prompt complexity, model processing, chat length and feature usage. A broader weekly limit governs overall model interactions and compute-intensive feature usage across the platform. You can only attach 20 files to Gemini at once, maximum file size for uploads is 100MB, and there is a maximum of 10 active Scheduled Actions at a time.
If you’re having an issue with your log-in or with the single-sign-on (SSO), please contact the ITS HelpDesk.
If your issue or question is specific to UofL’s Google instance, please submit a service ticket for Google in our service catalog.
If you need assistance with a Google Workspace tool, we suggest the Google Workspace Learning Center, Gemini and Notebook online support webpages.