Google Docs and Group Projects

I'm in my third year at SCILS, so I have suffered throu..ahem..enjoyed participating in many group projects. My classes have been split about 50/50 between on-campus and online.

1) I have actually been REQUIRED by a professor (online professional development education class) to use Google docs as a group collaborative tool. She could keep track of our progress on the assignment and who was doing what. We didn't have to deal with endless rounds of e-mailed documents, or God forbid, multiple versions attached to eCompanion posts.

2) Once I used Google docs in my online class, I forced everyone I ever collaborated with on campus to use it, too. Why mess around with e-mails and phone calls or drive to New Brunswick if you don't have to????

For students, Google docs is a godsend. E-mailing document versions back and forth is confusing, and there is always a lot of waiting. Using Google docs, if someone in your group hasn't logged in for 3 days, you can tell, and get on them about it. Also, Google docs allows multiple editors at the same time. This is a huge advantage over other collaborative programs, like pbwiki, where only one person at a time can edit a page.

When I use Google docs, I have found a couple of things work really well:

- previously formatted documents uploaded from Word or PowerPoint; usually only minor tweaking needed when you reload it to the original program for final presentation.

- different font colors help participants identify what has been added and by whom. You can use one doc to have an asynchronous conversation about the project; this can be separate from your "official" project doc.

- collecting links to resources in one document provides a ready-made reference list, which comes in really handy when you're doing the works cited page.

Of course, Google docs isn't foolproof. If you mix up someone's e-mail address, they can't access the document. If you have multiple Google accounts, like me, it's easy to get mixed up about which documents you can access from which account. Also, I find the eden.rutgers.edu site on Google very confusing. I can never seem to get there without clicking the document link that somebody e-mails me, which I guess is a minor inconvenience, but it's annoying nonetheless. As a collaborative tool, though, Google docs is time-saving, offers lots of presentation options, and you can control who has access to your document and what they can do with it.

I wish professors who assign group projects would recommend using Google docs. If you're worried about Google taking over the world (or learning everything there is to know about you), there are alternatives, like Sakai. In my experience, online professors do recommend using online collaborative tools. I wonder whether campus professors lack familiarity with online collaboration tools? When you are accustomed to meeting with people F2F, it's easy to overlook the potential benefits of online collaborative tools. I find that on-campus students (me included) tend to assume that group collaboration means physically getting together at some point, and that doesn't have to be the case.

Beginning in January 2009, incoming MLIS students who attend the tech bootcamps will be introduced to Google docs and Delicious as valuable (free!) tools for group collaboration. I'm hoping this will influence new students to think differently about the way they approach group projects!