Google Docs and Students

I think Google docs is a great way online students can work collaboratively on projects. Some super useful Google docs features are the ability to share documents and monitor/create different user levels. I also think Google docs can have similar benefits for on-campus students – especially grad students/part-timers who usually are working and/or have family responsibilities outside of school.

Google docs and other social software tools can make group work easier on the whole for all students because online projects can be worked on at a time convenient for each individual student and no one needs to travel anywhere on or near Route 18 (sorry, it was a worse than usual commute to work this morning...) Plus, when a project is done one can simply cut and paste the material into other programs/websites thus saving time.

I think in general this type of document would be accepted by faculty – and eventually welcomed - especially as it gains in popularity with current students. Also, it may be welcomed more as businesses/future employers continue to implement more social software as they struggle to find new ways to offer employees flex time (via teleworking, home offices, etc). It also has some features I would think would be useful to faculty for grading purposes – or supervisors for business purposes – such as maintaining a history of changes, allowing only certain users, seeing when the project was started, how many times it was edited, who worked on it, etc.