Google Docs eases the pain of group work
March 8th, 2011 | Published in Google Student Blog
Miles Malerba is a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Google Student Ambassador. In this post he writes about using Google Docs for group projects as a Software Engineering major. If you have a tip that you’d like to share and have featured on this blog, let us know!
As a Software Engineering student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I do a lot of group projects. Luckily I recently discovered what a powerful tool Google Docs can be for group project work, and I’m not the only one who has noticed; the majority of students in my software engineering classes are also now using Google Docs for their group assignments. The collaborative features of Google Docs make working on an assignment with other people much easier and more efficient.
Before Google Docs, I did my group projects in a traditional desktop word processor, which was always a hassle. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the common scenarios that plague traditional group work: everyone standing around while one person types (frustrating and unpleasant for everyone), or dividing up the work so each member is responsible for a portion (great in theory, but problems abound with multiple versions, overlapping content and the one laggard who always finishes at the last minute).
Luckily, thanks to Google Docs, I don’t have these problems anymore.
I recently took a software requirements class and was given a group assignment to meet with an actual start up company that was interested in doing requirements analysis on the software they were developing. My group - of course - used Google Docs to help us coordinate. In our initial team meeting we set up a collection that was shared with all of the group members; this way any document we added to the collection could immediately be seen by everyone else in the group. After that we created outlines for all of the documents we needed and added them to the collection. We assigned each person a section to start working on and adjourned the meeting. Later that night when I went to work on my section I found that a few of the other group members were logged in too, working on their sections. As I worked on my section I encountered a few areas that needed to be clarified and so I just used the chat panel in Docs to ask my group what they thought. By the time I finished my section, I noticed everyone else had finished theirs too and I could immediately look over the document and make sure everything fit together. There was no emailing documents back and forth, everything just came together as we wrote it.
After completing the initial draft of the documents my group went to do an on-site meeting with the company. Only after reaching their office did we realize nobody had actually printed the documents to show them! After a brief moment of panic I realized that we did have our laptops and an internet connection. I jumped on to Google Docs, brought up the relevant documents, and shared them with the stakeholders in the meeting. We realized that this was actually a better way to do it, because we were all logged in and could take notes right on the document. The stakeholders could see us making notes based on their feedback so they knew we weren’t missing anything important. At the end of the meeting we told the stakeholders that should they come up with any additional feedback they could just add a comment right to the document and we’d take care of it.
For me this project was one of those moments where you realize just how much technology has changed the way you do things. Now that I use Google Docs I can’t imagine having to do a group project without it.
So whenever I wind up in a group that has never tried Docs before I insist that we try it, and we can stop using it if the group doesn’t like it; I’ve never been in a group that didn’t like it.
As a Software Engineering student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I do a lot of group projects. Luckily I recently discovered what a powerful tool Google Docs can be for group project work, and I’m not the only one who has noticed; the majority of students in my software engineering classes are also now using Google Docs for their group assignments. The collaborative features of Google Docs make working on an assignment with other people much easier and more efficient.
Before Google Docs, I did my group projects in a traditional desktop word processor, which was always a hassle. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the common scenarios that plague traditional group work: everyone standing around while one person types (frustrating and unpleasant for everyone), or dividing up the work so each member is responsible for a portion (great in theory, but problems abound with multiple versions, overlapping content and the one laggard who always finishes at the last minute).
Luckily, thanks to Google Docs, I don’t have these problems anymore.
I recently took a software requirements class and was given a group assignment to meet with an actual start up company that was interested in doing requirements analysis on the software they were developing. My group - of course - used Google Docs to help us coordinate. In our initial team meeting we set up a collection that was shared with all of the group members; this way any document we added to the collection could immediately be seen by everyone else in the group. After that we created outlines for all of the documents we needed and added them to the collection. We assigned each person a section to start working on and adjourned the meeting. Later that night when I went to work on my section I found that a few of the other group members were logged in too, working on their sections. As I worked on my section I encountered a few areas that needed to be clarified and so I just used the chat panel in Docs to ask my group what they thought. By the time I finished my section, I noticed everyone else had finished theirs too and I could immediately look over the document and make sure everything fit together. There was no emailing documents back and forth, everything just came together as we wrote it.
After completing the initial draft of the documents my group went to do an on-site meeting with the company. Only after reaching their office did we realize nobody had actually printed the documents to show them! After a brief moment of panic I realized that we did have our laptops and an internet connection. I jumped on to Google Docs, brought up the relevant documents, and shared them with the stakeholders in the meeting. We realized that this was actually a better way to do it, because we were all logged in and could take notes right on the document. The stakeholders could see us making notes based on their feedback so they knew we weren’t missing anything important. At the end of the meeting we told the stakeholders that should they come up with any additional feedback they could just add a comment right to the document and we’d take care of it.
For me this project was one of those moments where you realize just how much technology has changed the way you do things. Now that I use Google Docs I can’t imagine having to do a group project without it.
So whenever I wind up in a group that has never tried Docs before I insist that we try it, and we can stop using it if the group doesn’t like it; I’ve never been in a group that didn’t like it.