In-class collaboration with Google Docs

BLUF: Google Docs is useful for collaboration and community building. 

Today each of my composition classes created a chart using Google Docs. Based on the "Writing in the Disciplines" section of the Writer's Harbrace Handbook, they compared standards of writing in the humanities, in the social sciences, in the natural sciences, and in business. I asked them to compare the purposes for writing (such as interpretation or solving a problem), tasks (like summary, description, literature review, laboratory steps), sources of evidence, and some conventions. Here is part of one class's chart: 

I assigned this task because their first paper asks them to evaluate "truth and knowledge" in a discipline, which is a broad, vague topic that must be refined and limited to be successful. I argue that examining standards of writing is one way to approach the types of claims and evidence valued in a field. 

After discussing their findings, each group created an entry for "truth and knowledge" in their discipline. Here is what they found: 

• Humanities: Truth is subjective. Truth is an abstraction. Knowledge is valuable for its own sake. Knowledge is facts and theories, history and perspectives. Reasoning is very important. Complex claims are most valued. Argumentation is valued to hone reasoning skills and for leading to better understanding.
• Social Sciences: Truth is observable/replicable and evidenced through research/experimentation. Truth is objective. Knowledge can be proven and should be shared. Knowledge contributes to the conversation in the field and can be expanded on by other professionals. Derives something concrete from broad, observable phenomena
• Natural Sciences: can only disprove or fail to disprove a “truth”. truth is what you observe and what can be reproduced. quantitative data are valued more than qualitative data when it comes to what is knowledge. extensive background knowledge of particular field required to get as close to truth as you can get. unarguable, empirical, fact based truth and knowledge. what can be seen and tested
• Business: Truth is often dependent upon the situation. Most truths are based on facts. However truths are commonly portrayed with bias leading to misconceptions. Knowledge is based upon truths paired with past experiences. Knowledge is more valuable as the genre requires the individual to be have a certain drive for the business or idea to be successful.

I'm very pleased with their thinking. They're gaining confidence and depth as they discover avenues for exploring the topic. I'm especially pleased with the community-building that occurred in each class as a result of the collaboration.

I enjoy using Google Docs in class because it's fun. It can have a large number of collaborators at any moment--20 seems to be a reasonable limit, based on past experience--which made some chaos inevitable. Sometimes one student would be writing a sentence only to have another edit it right behind them. The anonymity of logins makes it a challenge to discover who the culprit is! They laugh at the login-handles: animals like the loris or elephant. The laughter makes the task more enjoyable, encourages them to relax, and brings them together as a group. 

One further advantage of this task is that they'll have this document to look back on for the rest of the semester.