How To Annoy Colleagues When Sharing Google Drive documents

About two years ago, a friend and colleague introduced me to the power of sharing Google Drive documents. She and I have a system, and are amazingly in sync when we work together in a document, whether it’s a grant proposal or research paper. For us, it’s a faster way to bang out a paper on deadline.

After some reflection today, it hit me that in the beginning, I was probably the most annoying partner in Google Docs. So, I’ve pulled together a list of ways to annoy your colleagues in a shared Google Doc. You could annoy coworkers in an emailed Word doc, but these are especially bothersome in the real-time of Google. I am guilty of some of these and have been on the receiving end of others. Here it goes:

1. Constantly make preferential changes – when you change someone’s word choice just because you like “for example” more than “for instance.”
   
   
2. Be a grammar witch – you clean up someone’s grammar immediately after they have typed it. Have the decency to wait until you both hit the revision stage of the writing process, and make sure you are both working with the same style guide.
   
   
3. Be a territorial watchdog – This happens When you monitor who has made changes to your document and make changes after them, so your name is most current beneath the “last modified” column.
   
   
4. “Chat” in the body of the working document – Google Docs has a chat function, and that’s what it is for. Save the running commentary for the chat feature, or the notes function. My colleague and I don’t want to remove all of those remarks from our document. In many cases, we create our pdf directly from Google Docs for submission.
   
   

   

   Screenshot taken by author.

   
   
   
5. Don’t give any instructions to new collaborator to your document – They will be lost and you will have to clean up their additions that might be off target or topic. Make sure new collaborators have been given the same courtesy of instruction as the original collaborators.
   
   
6. Quietly stew and don’t ask questions or speak your piece– Even with the chat function, some brainstorming and organization may be lost in the written word. A quick phone call or Google Hangout at the beginning or end of a session can quickly shore up any unresolved project issues.
   
   
7. Simply hover while the other party works – If you don’t have anything to offer in a particular section, find a section of the project where you can contribute.
   
   
8. Don’t let a minor detail go – Like any project, you can get bogged down in minutia in a Google Doc. Use a note to mark the issue and keep working. Once you finish the first draft that issue may be resolved itself, or may seem much smaller.

I’m proud to report that I’m somewhat reformed, although No. 2 gets me sometimes still. A lot of it comes down to suppressing the control freak within to truly collaborate.

Which ones are your tops? Or what would you add to the list?

Dr. Sarah Maben is co-director of the Texas Social Media Research Institute and an editor for The Journal of Social Media in Society. She teaches journalism and public relations courses at Tarleton StateUniversity. Follow her on Twitter @SarahMaben.

Social Media in the Classroom

Social media   can serve as a powerful tool to improve communication and collaboration while still ensuring proper boundaries of privacy between teacher and student. A recent post via Mashable Social Media suggests instructors find out what social media platforms your students use most and integrate them into your course.  Dan Klamm, Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Syracuse University Career Services, says, “Social media is a way to enhance student learning and grow discussions.”

Facebook:  Group Pages
One example of using social media in the classroom would be to establish a class page or private group. This can be a great tool for group discussions or idea exchanges. For example, in one of my classes, my professor, Dr. Sarah Maben, established a private group page on Facebook. Students use this page to post ideas and other content related to our class objectives. Maben says, “Students can exchange real-world examples of what they are learning in class and from readings.” It’s a great way for students to comment on the different ideas that are posted.

"As instructor, using Facebook helps provide examples that mean something to my students. I can find examples, but the ones they find are often better and more interesting to them. The searching for items to post on our shared space also keeps class materials in students' minds for longer than just our face-to-face meeting,” says Maben.

Twitter:  Discussion Tweets
In another class, my professor utilized Twitter for a class assignment. Many students had not used Twitter, so this assignment gave them the opportunity to learn how to use the social media platform. Students exchanged messages, known as Tweets, about class discussions or other class information by using a common hashtag (#). A hashtag (#) is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. The image below is an example of a Tweet using a hashtag.

(Image via Twitter Help Center: http://support.twitter.com/entries/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols)

Tweets are categorized by the hashtag keywords or topics, which allows Twitter users to easily search by the hashtag to see all relevant Tweets. This feature can be very beneficial in tracking classroom related Tweets.

Google:  Docs for Collaboration
Another social media tool that can be used is Google Docs. Google Docs is a group of products, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that allows multiple users to create and edit the documents. This suite of products can serve as very useful tools in the classroom.  For example, in one of my classes, we used Google Docs to create a research paper. Members of the group were able to contribute on an individual basis, but also to collaboratively edit the project. The document feature also allows users to add comments and track all changes made. This helps students communicate about the tasks assigned and also teaches them how to collaborate in the virtual world.

As Klamm says, “By being mindful of your students’ comfort levels, encouraging group discussion on official class pages and being clear about your boundaries, you will create lively and extremely useful communication channels for your students.”