For students to develop their main essays in Google Docs, this page serves as a guide to set it up for them. Google Docs is also where the instructor can provide feedback in the form of inline edits, comments and suggestions, and where students respond to instructor feedback. Each student would write all essays in one drafting document housed in a shared folder in Google Drive throughout the whole semester, making copies and downloading work as necessary. After working on each essay in a series of stages, students would download their final draft from Google Docs and upload it to Blackboard or submit it as hard copy. Once they have submitted an essay, they would delete all text from their drafting document and start the next assignment in the same collaborative drafting doc.
The purpose of this guide is to outline the technical particularities for each stage of the revising process in Google Docs.
Setting up
First, create a Gmail account or use your existing gmail account. Ask students to email you their Gmail addresses.
Shared Google Docs should be housed in Google Drive. To access Google Drive from Google or Gmail, click on the Google Apps icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen, find Drive and click on its icon. This will take you to Google Drive.
Create a folder for each team of students you will have grouped together by major or other criteria. As you receive student Gmail addresses create a drafting doc for each student in each student’s corresponding team folder, naming it “[first name] Drafting Document.” Share each drafting doc with its designated student. This is the individual drafting document each student would be working with all semester.
Note: while students draft, revise and keep their writing in the drafting doc on Google Drive, they are advised to save a Microsoft Word version on their personal laptop or flash drive. To save a copy on a device select File> Download as> Microsoft Word (.docx). Note that if you re-upload or upload a Word Doc to Google Drive you have to “open with” Google Docs to turn the Word Doc into a Google Doc.
First draft
Students must specify course and section, instructor’s name, assignment and draft number, student’s name and the date at the top of the page and to label the first draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number] Draft 1.” To rename a draft simply place your cursor on the document title at the top left of the screen above the dropdown menu, click and type in the box.
First Draft Review Day
The first draft would be reviewed in class as peer review. Designate who will review whose drafts and inform students of who they should share their drafts with for review.
Before students begin the peer review they must set the “Editing” drop down menu underneath the “SHARE” button at the top right of the screen to “Suggesting” and keep the document in suggesting mode when they provide feedback to their peers. To make suggestions students should type directly inline in their peer’s draft. To add a comment, they should first highlight a section of text and then from the drop down menu at the top of the page select Insert> Comment. They can reply to their peer’s comments and suggestions by writing in the “Reply…” box under each suggestion and comment on the side of the document.
As students – and later the instructor – to revise and edit a draft using the “Suggesting” feature, you will see that the changes you make are tracked. Writers and anyone with editing privileges can accept or reject changes by clicking on the ticks or crosses in the boxes that appear on the right side of the screen. Students must resolve all comments and accept or reject all suggestions after the reviewing a draft so that the instructor can find the drafting doc clean and be able to give feedback in the form of comments and suggestions in the drafting doc.
Students are told to relabel their draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number] Draft 1 – peer reviewed”
Students are welcome to go into their drafting doc and work on their writing at any time. After they do so, no comments or tracked changes should remain in their documents unless these are addressed to the instructor.
Revision of first draft
After the first draft submission date the instructor reads first student drafts in Google Docs and adds comments and suggestions. Students then read these, make any changes they consider appropriate, accept or reject all suggestions and resolve all comments. Note that, as an instructor, you can always retrieve older versions of a drafting document because all prior versions are automatically saved and can be accessed at any time in the Google Docs revision history. To retrieve comments and suggestions and look at earlier versions of a draft, select File> Version History> See version history.
Students are told to relabel their draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number] Draft 1 – revised”
Use of Google Docs in group conference
Second draft
Students revise and edit the first draft so as to turn it into a second draft. They are told to resolve all suggestions and comments not addressed to the instructor but invited to communicate concerns and questions to the instructor via comments.
Students are told to relabel their draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number] Draft 2”
Second Draft Review Day
The procedure will be exactly the same as in the first peer review: tell students who to share their drafts with and who will review their work and provide them with peer review guidelines. Students must resolve all comments and accept or reject all suggestions after the Second Draft Review Day.
Revision of second draft
While the main focus of the first revision are content and organization, the main focus of the second revision is language, punctuation, citation, and style so you may want to write inline more than you did in your revision of the first draft. Remember to set the editing feature to “Suggesting.”
Students are told to relabel their draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number] Draft 2 – revised”
Use of Google Docs in individual conference
Students are invited to bring laptops to the conference to work directly in Google Docs.
Final Draft
When students have made any changes they consider appropriate, accepted or rejected all suggestions and resolved all comments and revised and edited as much as they like, they turn their second draft into their final draft.
Students are told to relabel their draft by renaming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number]”
Assignment Submission
Students are instructed to Select File> Download as> Microsoft Word (.docx)and save the downloaded document to their computer, naming it “[first name last name] Assignment [number],” then upload it to Blackboard or print it and submit as hard copy.