Peer Feedback in Academic Writing Using Google Docs

Abstract

This paper describes a method for students to give each other written feedback in academic writing using a Google Docs as a Social Annotation (SA) tool. Student attitudes to using this method has been evaluated, along with their attitudes towards using digital documents as opposed to paper based documents in various education related situations. The results show that the method described was highly appreciated, and furthermore showed that the students in the study already read digitally distributed documents on screen rather than printing them, and that they were very positive to using digital documents rather than paper based documents. It is argued that the method used can be generalized to other kinds of document based discussions such as seminars discussing papers, and that the positive attitude towards using digital documents can be further increased with current and upcoming technical solutions such as HTML5 and the iPad.