We used the Google Doc as like a modified "shared table-top". While we weren't able to see each other's screens (we were each using our own laptop), when considering it from this perspective, the reasons why this was so useful to us came out. One reason was that it was the easiest way for us to work on the document at the same time while discussing it, being able to share it later, as well as seeing what the final product would be without having to annotate directly. Essentially, the doc provided shared access to a digital object. For the same reason, it also helped, “…maintain the group focus and facilitate awareness within the group because body positioning and eye gaze of group members attending to the same object can be easily interpreted by other group members” (Scott 169).
One interesting outcome of working on a Google Doc was our curiosity of what happened when people were typing at the same time on the same document. We assumed it would be fine when typing in different places (it was as we were doing this all along), but what happens when we typed at the same place. We tried this by typing gibberish at the same spot on all three computers simultaneously. We were pleasantly surprised that it came out with everyone words and in the same order when the display was updated again. Essentially, it supported simultaneous user actions, which we were quite happy with.
One aspect that should be mentioned about the sharing of a Google Doc, is that while I’ve been talking about it as a shared space, one might also think of it as a hybrid space. While we were all sitting in the same place while working on it, we technically weren’t hunched over or pointing the same points. We would bold sections or words to give indication of what we were talking about, but there would be a lag time to update. We all could have been sitting in different locations and could have done the same thing with the talking over IM. Doing it together though prevented us from forming in and out groups though.
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Yes, GoogleDocs is very helpful. It is interesting to think of it as a shared space as you guys were all looking at it from separate computers, but for the most part you were all looking at the exact same document. Workspace awareness could be increased if Google updated it in real-time so that one could see exactly what everyone else was doing. But since you guys were colocated and could easily talk to each other, it was probably easy to point out different sections of the document.
ReplyDeleteThis task was similar to the one I wrote about in my post. I think Google Docs is a very interesting tool because though it was probably made to facilitate remote collaboration, I find myself using it more often in settings where everybody is collocated but on their own laptop due to the communication difficulties of coordinating over another messaging service. Integrating a chat client would be useful; to make up for the lack of this users often use the top section of a document as a shared space to post messages like a to-do list but it is cumbersome.
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