Online Collaboration Tools

Facilitating Collaborative Peer Review of Student Writing Using Google Docs

A short video describing this teaching strategy can be seen here.

Brandon Respress, School of Nursing, instructs upperlevel undergraduates in the writing of grant proposals in preparation for independent research projects with faculty mentors. Each week, students draft or revise a section of a standard NIH grant proposal, refining the designs of their individual research projects, as well as their scientific inquiry and disciplinary writing skills. Respress creates a Google Doc collection for each weekly assignment, “chunking” portions of the proposal that require different skill sets and degrees of conceptual mastery.

As students post drafts to each collection, the entire class automatically receives viewing and commenting privileges. Respress and students then use the Google Doc commenting feature to leave substantive, conceptual feedback on each other’s drafts. Respress carefully models and discusses effective feedback practices during the first few weeks of the course online, while continuing to provide weekly feedback during classroom sessions. Read more »

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Editing Wikipedia to Improve Writing to a General Audience

A short video describing this teaching strategy can be seen here.
A student example can be seen here.

As an alternative to a traditional research paper, Anne McNeil, LSA Department of Chemistry, incorporated a project utilizing Wikipedia.org to enhance her students' understanding of advanced topics in Chemistry and improve students’ scientific communication skills. Small groups of students in her graduate-level chemistry courses are challenged to collaborate on creating or revising public Wikipedia pages that will clearly communicate challenging concepts to both laypersons and experts.  Read more »

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