using google drive to prepare students for workplace writing and to encourage student responsibility, collaboration, and revision

> Marianne CotugnoIn this article, I explain how integrating Google Drive into your classroom can help prepare students to participate effectively in workplace writing practices and can

> Marianne Cotugno

In this article, I explain how integrating Google Drive into your classroom can help prepare

students to participate effectively in workplace writing practices and can promote

student responsibility, collaboration, and effective revisions.

Using Google Drive to Prepare Students for

Workplace Writing and to Encourage Student

Responsibility, Collaboration, and Revision

As a teacher at an Miami University’s open-access, regional campus in

Mid-dletown, Ohio, I work with a student population diverse by many

defini-tions—whether one uses the traditional demographic data of college students,

socioeconomic status, ideology, academic preparation, or access to technology I

teach a range of courses, including first-year writing, technical communication,

literature surveys, and upper-division literature and professional writing courses

Regardless of the course I teach, as a teacher, two of my goals are to con-nect the work of the class with students’ professional goals and to promote students’

responsibility for their learning Google Drive helps me do this

In this article, I explain how integrating Google Drive into my classroom helps prepare students to participate effectively in workplace writing practices and

promotes student responsibility, collaboration, and effective revisions I also

acknowl-edge the challenges of using Google Drive and offer strategies for addressing them

These challenges are both similar to and different from the challenges experienced

when using any technology in the classroom

Becoming a Google Apps for Education Campus

Approximately two years ago, my university became a Google Apps for Education

campus Google first launched its Apps for Education in October 2006; it now has

more than 25 million users (Google) Google Apps provides web-based applications,

so users do not download and install software Thus, Google Apps offers a direct

challenge to Microsoft Office and other software suites that require downloading

and installation In response to Google Apps, Microsoft now offers its own

cloud-based application, Office Web Apps

According to a university webpage providing information about the aca-demic experience at our university, Google Apps allows users “to create, store, share,

InstruCtIonAl notE

and edit files in Google Drive, one of the many tools available through Google

Apps for Education” (Miami University, “Academic”) The university supported

the transition through a series of forums, online tutorials, and frequent email

com-munication When explaining the advantages of this move on a page devoted to

GoGoogle, two reasons are cited: a substantially greater amount of storage and the

ability to collaborate with the entire university community (Miami University,

“GoGoogle”) A more detailed review of the reasons for the change can be found

on a webpage, “Why Google Apps?” (Miami University) That page offers reasons

tied to lower infrastructure and support costs

using Google Drive in the Classroom

I teach a range of courses in multiple delivery modes—from first-year writing

courses in a seated environment to advanced professional and technical writing

courses online I use Google Drive in all my courses, but I focus here on its

ap-plication in first-year writing

Currently, our university requires students to complete six credits of first-year writing For many of our students, these six credits are essential to their academic

and professional success, because our students are often many years removed from

previous academic experiences—whether that’s college course work or high school

work It should be noted that we are in the midst of a revision of our liberal

educa-tion program, and, sadly from my perspective, three of those six credits might be

eliminated A few years ago, the university invested significant resources to revise

the curriculum for both of these courses, so that they are more firmly grounded in

inquiry-based learning and the use of multimodal technologies All of our classes

are taught in mediated classrooms, and some classes are taught in rooms with

indi-vidual computers available to students—either desktops or through a laptop cart

Some students will bring personal laptops to class We also offer online sections of

first-year writing

Although it is easy to recognize technology in the classroom, whether a computer, a SMART Board, or a chalkboard delivers the content, it is essential that

teachers and students understand technology not merely as a means for delivering

content but as both a tool and a subject for intellectual inquiry Continuing to

use outdated technologies in the classroom does not prepare our students for the

demands of twenty-first-century life Google Drive helps me help my students

Using Google Drive in the classroom provides an immediate connection between the work of the class and students’ everyday lives, because of Google’s

pervasiveness Clearly, this concerns some Some critics see Google as a monopoly

that uses improper business tactics and lacks concern for individual privacy (Hatch)

Questions have been raised about Google’s operations in China, with George

Brenkert asserting, “the framework Google has used to respond to criticisms of its

actions does not successfully or obviously address the important ethical issues it

faces” (453) I do not dismiss these concerns or criticisms, but Google’s

omnipres-ence remains the reality of most students’ daily experiomnipres-ence

That daily experience exists beyond the boundaries of their college educa-tion By using Google Drive, students also ensure that the technology they use while

in the university will be accessible to them once they graduate the university In

contrast, students who use software packages purchased while enrolled at a college

or university often cannot use these resources after they graduate

Cloud Computing and Google Drive as Web 2.0 tool

Kris Jamsa notes, “The concept of a cloud and the Internet is not new For years

developers and network administrators have represented the Internet as a cloud,” but

this approach ignored the “underlying communication complexity” and assumed

“that messages would flow successfully from one Internet-connected network to

another” (15) Today, cloud computing “describes the abstraction of web-based

computers, resources, and services that system developers can utilize to implement

complex web-based systems” (Jamsa 1) Google Drive exemplifies cloud

comput-ing and Web 2.0 William I Wolff argues that “writcomput-ing in the age of Web 2.0 exists

within an ecosystem of dynamic, overlapping, and evolving interactivities” (223)

Certainly, Google Drive expresses that ecosystem The term Web 2.0 was

popular-ized by Tim O’Reilly in 2005 Web 2.0 describes “the set of tools and websites

that allow users to publish content to the web without the direct use of HTML”

(Jamsa 3) For example, a blog, which allows a user to publish content directly to

the Web, is a Web 2.0 tool

Critical literature is beginning to address the impact that Google Drive can have on classroom teaching and student learning (Sofia; Zhou, Simpson, and

Domizi), although Google Drive might be one of many Web 2.0 tools considered

(Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, and Hansen) The efforts of Wenyi Zhou, Elizabeth Simpson,

and Denisse Pinette Domizi focused on the effectiveness of a Google Docs

collab-orative assignment completed outside class for an introductory psychology course

Yet, despite the promise afforded by Google Docs to facilitate collaboration and

eliminate some of the difficulties of face-to-face collaborative models, the study

finds “[t]here was no significant effect of using Google Docs on students’ learning,

as measured by students’ assignment grades” (365) However, the authors do point

out that assignment grades might not accurately reflect learning experiences

Noting how new literacies have changed collaboration in terms of both ethical and technological considerations, Peter Kittle and Troy Hicks offer

sugges-tions for activities including the opportunity for synchronous group writing offered

by Google Docs (530)

Unfortunately, Kittle and Hicks do not offer an assessment of Google Docs’ effectiveness In contrast, Google Documents have been shown to promote

student engagement in a limited study (George, Dreibelbis, and Aumiller) Daniel

R George, Tomi D Dreibelbis, and Betsy Aumiller describe how Google Docs

and SurveyMonkey were used to allow 154 first-year medical college students in

a lecture-based course to provide real-time responses and questions to the lecturer

during the course (518) According to the authors, “Both technologies generated

student-driven content for the lecturer to address and prompted online

conversa-tions among students during lectures Because the Google Doc enabled students

to post anonymously, questions were often directly challenging to lecturers” (518)

More work in this area is needed, and I hope to design an assessment that provides a qualitative evaluation of the impact of Google Drive As one article notes,

“little is known about the difference in students’ performance with and without

Google Docs” (Zhou, Simpson, and Domizi 360)

Preparing students for Workplace Writing

I introduce Google Drive to my students on our first day of class By virtue of

having a university account, students have access to Google Drive I also explain

that students can use a personal Gmail account and have access to similar features I

demonstrate that Google Drive provides storage space that can be accessed as long

as the student can connect to the Internet

Within Google Drive, students can create folders and document types similar

to what can be created through software-based applications I ask that students

“cre-ate” a folder and “share” this folder with me Essentially, students provide me with

access to the folder and its contents by linking the folder with my email account

Several options for shared access exist Students can allow me, or any individual,

or any group, access “to view,” “to comment,” or “to edit,” or any combination of

the three settings For the purposes of our course, “to edit” makes the most sense,

because that allows me complete access to their folder

For seated classes, I show the students how to create folders in class Some students already know how to do this, but for many, this is their first time For

on-line classes, I provide a walk-through as well as step-by-step directions Although

most students can easily follow these instructions, some students do struggle, so it

is important that the instructor confirm that all students have shared the folder and

used the correct permissions setting

Because I believe that my students will be employed by workplaces that increasingly use cloud-based technology (or whatever follows when the cloud

dissipates), I want them to become comfortable working in cloud environments as

students Many of my students are unfamiliar with the concept of a cloud

environ-ment even if they recognize its features

I still have students who carry all of their files on a USB drive, which can be easily lost or damaged I also have students who use desktop or laptop computers

with hard drives Some students own computers they’ve purchased used, and it is

not uncommon for a student to tell me that his or her laptop’s hard drive “died”

or is infected with viruses that prevent the student from accessing her or his work

Cloud-based workplaces are increasingly common Professionals continue

to call for adoption of cloud environments for many reasons, including as a way to

mitigate the loss of productivity from a major disruption, such as a natural event

or even a terrorist attack (Murray and Mirghani 20) Although different in terms

of scale and scope, the impact of lost USB drives, failed hard drives, and

virus-infected laptops on my students resembles the impact of works affected by “a major

disruption”—a loss of productivity

Cloud computing represents a response to a changing workforce, as the case study described by Tom Chefalas et al illustrates; these authors note that 50

percent of IBM’s workforce has been with the company five years or less, which

“means there [must] be a quick and efficient way to provision employees, and to

quickly de-provision, as well” (2) Provision here means to provide (and withdraw)

resources quickly and efficiently from employees, whether that means granting

ac-cess to sensitive documents and proprietary data or some other company resource

Workers expect to “work any place, anytime, anywhere” (Chefalas et al 2)

My experiences as a university professor dramatize this fact To prepare this article,

I used Google Drive and worked in my university office during the day, on three

separate computers at home in the evenings and on weekends, and on my laptop

at multiple locations, including a local coffee shop and at a home out of state

When it comes to our students, the growth of online classes and degree programs

demonstrates the application of this “any place, anytime, anywhere” concept to

education Using cloud-based applications in teaching is an extension of this

ap-proach to delivering education

I believe it is important that students produce their university writing in circumstances that prepare them for the challenges of the workplace Although I

cannot know what their workplaces will look like exactly, I believe the days of

people saving files to hard drives and emailing attachments are numbered

There-fore, it is irresponsible for me to continue to insist that students prepare and submit

their work in an environment and using methods that are already dated When I

introduce students to the practice of using shared Google Drives, I explain that the

contemporary, evolving workplace motivates this choice

Although the use of Google Drive in the classroom does not prevent my students’ desktops and laptops from breaking, the preservation of their writing in

a cloud provides them continued access to that work

Promoting student responsibility

Especially in first-year writing classes, a common concern that my students express

is that they procrastinate when writing major assignments Scaffolding work can

help students overcome this by forcing them to begin working on major projects

through the writing of smaller parts However, procrastination can still be a problem

Students who procrastinate are less likely to be able to revise prior to submitting

their writing, which can inhibit their ability to learn from the experience of

writ-ing (Young and Fritzsche 45–46)

During the term, students create their assignments as Google Documents or

“Docs” within those shared folders This allows me to “check in” on their progress

in a variety of ways For example, if I ask students to complete an in-class activity, I

can view their document as they are preparing it Google Docs allows me to write

messages that appear as a “conversation” alongside the student’s work in real time

It also allows students to ask me questions as they work, which might encourage

those students less likely to ask questions in class to seek help By typing questions

alongside their document as we both view it, students do not need to raise their

hands and call attention to their need for help Although this might feel a bit “big

brother”–like, Google does show the user that I am looking at the document by

displaying my avatar at the top of the screen

In my first-year writing classes, I use scaffolded assignments to help students complete major writing projects Often students begin these scaffolded assignments

during the class As they work on these assignments, I comment on student writing

as students prepare it This is similar to commenting on a student draft, but instead

of students “submitting” a draft by a fixed deadline, I just “look in” on the shared

document I always tell students I will be doing this, and students do not receive

grades on their unfinished work Compared with my experiences prior to using

Google Drive, some students seem more likely to get started on their assignments if

they know they can receive feedback on their writing; I regularly receive emails from

students asking me to “look” at their work prior to it being submitted Students still

must complete the final paper by a deadline, but their draft work can be more fluid

The sooner students start writing, the more feedback they can potentially receive

Also, I have found that asking students to submit their homework as part of

a shared Google Doc encourages higher completion rates For example, in my fall

2013 first-year writing course, I asked students to identify a sentence from a class

reading assignment and explain how it demonstrated ethos, pathos, and/or logos

The students were not merely to choose a sentence but to read what their peers

wrote as well I prepared a table with each student’s name in it as well as a space

where the students were to write their sentence and explanation Every student

completed this assignment, and this perfect completion rate might be attributed

to the fact that each student could see what his or her classmates did Students

who struggled to understand how to respond to the assignment might have gotten

ideas from reading their classmates’ responses, which might have promoted greater

confidence in their effort Additionally, there might have been a greater sense of

accountability; a student didn’t want his or her name to be the only one with a

blank box next to it For other homework assignments in which the students knew

that only I would review it, I received submissions from fewer than 100 percent

of the students

Facilitating Collaboration

Collaboration is the cornerstone of many writing classes as well as many workplace

writing experiences Although focusing on classroom peer review, a statement by

Kip Strasma, “We want students to have rich, robust, and constructive experiences

with each other’s writing” (153), describes my desire for students’ experiences with

all types of writing

Our recently revised first-year writing curriculum includes inquiries that appear to demand collaboration, and most of our technical communications courses

require collaborative writing projects Facilitated collaboration can be a way to make

writing matter beyond the earning of a grade (Tinberg) and a way of bridging the

academy-workplace divide (Blakeslee) Google Drive has changed and expanded

the way we collaborate in our classroom As noted earlier, the opportunity for

col-laboration was one of the two reasons cited by the university in its move to Google

Apps for Education

I can share a document with every student in the classroom and ask them

to simultaneously comment on it For example, if we are reviewing a sample essay

in a first-year writing course, I can provide a prompt that asks students to highlight

a strength of the essay and an area to improve Every student then comments on

the essay in real time and can see the work of their classmates It also helps students

visualize writing as an ongoing process They can literally see writing happen before

their eyes That they are not the ones doing the typing gives it a magical quality

Because students have access to this shared document, they can review it later or refer to it when creating a subsequent assignment In writing assignments,

my first-year writing students are asked to draw on the contributions of their

class-mates This resource allows them to rely on what classmates actually wrote rather

than on their memory of what might have been said

Google Drive has helped improve rough draft workshops Rather than asking students to bring a copy of their rough draft for an assignment to class so that another

student can read that rough draft, I ask that students “share” that document with a

classmate This also prevents students from forgetting to bring a draft—although it

does not prevent them from failing to complete the assignment

The students can then comment directly on the draft by typing their feed-back in much the same way that I provide mine I like that the students’ comments

on their peers’ drafts appear in the same way that my comments appear on their

submitted work I want students to recognize that peer feedback can be as valuable

and useful as feedback from the instructor Often students question the value of

that feedback—either by questioning their ability to provide usable feedback or by

questioning the quality of a classmate’s feedback The visual connection between

the two types of feedback reinforces my assertion that both are equally valuable

It’s possible, of course, that students’ feedback might be more useful, insightful, and

valuable to a student than my own In this effort, I echo the argument that peer

response exists as “a kind of apprenticeship in which students participate alongside

teachers” (Ching 314)

Assisting students’ revision

Google provides two major features essential to improving revision practices: “See

revision history” and “Insert Comment.”

Google saves each and every change that the user or users make to a docu-ment, which can be accessed through a menu option, “See revision history.” The

Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word provides this in a limited way but does

not include the moment-to-moment changes that a writer makes; instead,

Micro-soft Word provides a snapshot of all the changes made with no sense of a linear

chronology

In many situations, I have looked at a student’s writing process and revi-sions and made suggestions about how that student might proceed For example,

some students when revising only make editing or proofreading changes Being

able to see the revision history allows me to encourage the writer to consider

other types of changes and improvements I can also see how much time a student

spends developing a document, and can encourage students to spend more time

drafting and revising The revision history also allows a student to review his or

her revision process

I provide feedback using the Insert Comment function on Google Doc

This feature resembles the Insert Comment feature in Microsoft Word, but there

are additional benefits to Google Doc: you can “reply” to a comment, so a

con-versation thread can be started; you can “resolve” a comment, which causes the

comment to disappear from the immediate screen, but it is still accessible in the

document’s history

Because I encourage students to revise submitted papers, the reply and resolve functions are essential Students can reply to comments that are unclear to them

or can respond to questions I pose in the comments Many times students have

engaged in conversations with me about their writing by using the reply feature

I am not sure these students would have asked those same questions had they not

had the option of using this feature Users have the option of receiving an email

that indicates when a comment has received a reply I choose this option, so I know

immediately when a student responds to a comment on his or her paper, which

allows me to respond more immediately to students

When revising their essays, students can resolve a comment when they have addressed that concern or question through their revision I encourage them

to do this, so that they can track the changes and improvements they’ve made to

their writing Additionally, this allows me to see whether students have addressed

my responses to their paper

Although I have yet to do so, I plan to incorporate a reflective writing as-signment that asks students to review their revision history so that they can

sum-marize their revision strategies and suggest new possibilities for revision tactics It

would be useful to see whether students do recognize patterns to their revisions

and whether they can change those patterns to improve their writing

Problems and Pitfalls

As with any technology, problems and pitfalls exist I would be remiss if I did not

describe some of them and provide some suggestions for addressing them

As mentioned earlier, some students struggle with new media technologies

I have students whose typing skills consist of “hunt and peck,” and who would

rather handwrite a paper than submit it electronically Although many students

quickly learn how to share a folder, create a document, and use the other features

of Google Drive, each semester several students struggle to do so

But this motivates me to be even more adamant about introducing our students to cloud technology and encouraging them to extend themselves beyond

their comfort zone If a student cannot create and share a Google Drive folder in

my first-year writing class, how can that student be expected to transition smoothly

to a twenty-first-century workplace? Some students’ lack of comfort using new

technologies is an even stronger reason for insisting that these technologies be used

Helping our students learn how to navigate and understand new technologies is

more important than teaching them how to use one technology perfectly

Using Google Drive is an imperfect experience I have had students share

a folder at the beginning of the term but then create a Google Document outside

of their shared folder So, although these students completed the work, I cannot

see it in their shared folders Therefore, I assume they did not complete the

assign-ment and assign a grade accordingly Sometimes this has led to panicked emails

from students who do not understand why they received a particular grade on an

assignment As long as the work was completed on time, I accept the document

and revise the grade

I have had students who have shared a folder and then share each and every document they create within that folder As I explained to them at the start, as long

as they shared a folder with me at the beginning, anything in that folder will be

shared automatically They don’t need to take that extra step and create additional

work for themselves To address this, I send an email reminding the student that

any work included in a shared folder is visible to me

Another problem exists not with the user but with Google Being able

to print documents that include comments would be beneficial, but this is not

currently a possibility This is one advantage that Microsoft Word does have over

Google When a writer prints a Word document with comments, readers can see

those comments on the printed page; comments on a Google Doc do not appear

This can be frustrating

Regardless of whether a problem or pitfall exists on the user or delivery side, one of the keys when introducing students to Google Drive is patience Another

key is teaching the course in a classroom where students have access to individual

computers, so you can provide the students with hands-on experience using the

technology and model the activities described here

Obviously, students having reliable access to the Internet is important when using Google Drive, but notably Google Drive does have an offline feature that

allows students to work in situations where they do not have Internet access

Conclusions

Admittedly, some features that Google provides have been more successful in the

classroom than others Although beyond the scope of this article, my experiences

with Google Groups have been disappointing and have caused me to return to our

Sakai-based learning management system and its “Forums.” Even when things go

well, as in the case of Google Drive, there are bumps along the way, which I have

briefly reviewed Still, I am encouraged by my experiences with Google Drive

It feels a bit uncomfortable asserting that Google creates a more egalitarian classroom situation, but using Google Drive can do so, at least in a limited way,

when it comes to students’ access to technology This can be particularly important

at the open admissions, regional campus where I teach and where many students

struggle financially to meet the burdens of supporting themselves as well as their

families and completing their education

Years ago, I tried getting my campus to allow us to install OpenOffice on our in-class computers, so that I could encourage students to use word processing

and spreadsheet programs that were open access and not sold by Microsoft

Unfor-tunately, I was unsuccessful, and for years I’ve had students explain that—despite

the discount provided by the university—they cannot afford to pay for the software

packages used in our classrooms Additionally, many of my students would purchase

used laptops or desktops that gave them frequent problems, such as crashed hard

drives or broken monitors, which affected their ability to complete assignments

Student work that was not “backed up” was lost forever when hard drives failed or

viruses infected computer systems Google Drive doesn’t eliminate this concern

and has its own limitations as a system dependent on Internet access, but it does

represent an improvement

Ultimately, how we teach and what we teach our students should evolve and be responsive to the environment I continue to seek new ways to reach my

students and to prepare them to be effective participants in their communities and

workplaces

Works Cited

Blakeslee, Ann M “Bridging the Workplace and the Academy: Teaching

Profes-sional Genres through Classroom-Workplace Collaborations.” Technical

Com-munication Quarterly 10.2 (2001): 169 Education Research Complete Web

Brenkert, George “Google, Human Rights, and Moral Compromise.” Journal of

Business Ethics 85.4 (2009): 453–78 Business Source Complete Web 22 Feb

2014

Brodahl, Cornelia, Said Hadjerrouit, and Nils Kristian Hansen “Collaborative

Writing with Web 2.0 Technologies: Education Students’ Perceptions.”

Jour-nal of Information Technology Education 10 (2011): IIP73–IIP103 Web.

Chefalas, Tom, et al “Leveraging Cloud in the Rapidly Evolving Workplace of

the Future.” 8th International Conference & Expo on Emerging

Technolo-gies for a Smarter World (CEWIT 2011): 1 (publisher provided full text

searching file) Web

<