New Google Docs Workflow Streamlines Collaboration for College Students
About 60 percent of today’s college students are using their smartphones to study, and that is largely thanks to the wide variety of apps they can make use of.
College students are regularly using tools like Google Docs on their mobile devices because the cloud technology makes it just as easy to work on a smartphone as it is to use a computer.
Now, thanks to an update, a new Google Docs workflow will make it even easier for students and professors to use the cloud-based tool in their classes.
SIGN UP: Get more news from the EdTech newsletter in your inbox every two weeks!
Version History Makes Collaboration Efficient
A large perk of G Suite for Education’s cloud tools is how easy the tools make collaboration.
DePaul University student Lauren Polito writes on EdTech that Google Slides and Docs have made it easy for her to work with other students, no matter where they were located.
With an update to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides released in late August, users can now name different versions of a document under version history, making it even easier to keep a record of progress. Users can also see what a document looks like with or without suggested edits or comments and accept or reject changes en masse.
“Getting people on the same page for a product can be tough,” writes Google Docs Product Manager Birkan Icacan in a blog post. “The last thing you should have to worry about is making sure your team is literally working on the same document.”
The new update also makes it easier for users to collaborate using Android or iOS devices.
Templates Streamline Document Creation
For educators, the power of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the simplicity of providing quick feedback to students on papers, presentations and quizzes.
Now, students and educators can use new customizable templates to make it even easier to use the Google tools for academic papers. A Google Doc template even lets users instantly write papers in the MLA format and use the EasyBib Add-On for easy citation.
A Paperpile blog post recommends Google Docs as a tool for digital-native students to write their thesis papers, largely thanks to the add-on tools.
“The platform has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, to the point that some now say it surpasses traditional desktop tools,” reads the blog.
