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Using Google Docs for guided Academic Writing assessments: students’ perspectives

  • Francesco Screti EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 5, 2023
Language Learning in Higher Education
From the journal Language Learning in Higher Education Volume 13 Issue 1

Abstract

This paper studies undergraduate students’ perceptions about using Google Docs® for guided writing of the final assessment in an Academic Writing course at a Higher Education level. Qualitative data have been collected through a Moodle survey and analysed employing Thematic Analysis. The aim is to see if students’ perceptions matched with their teacher’s aims, which were to reduce assessment anxiety toward a new and complex writing assignment such as a Literature Review; help working more effectively and reduce procrastination; and possibly enhance success rate. Results show that overall, students liked the technical features (autosaving, accessibility), the guidelines and examples contained in the template shared, and the role of the teacher as controller and provider of feedback and feedforward. Yet some few divergences between the teacher’s aim and students’ perceptions emerged: some students did not like working on-line, expressed preference for Microsoft Word®, found the procedure time-consuming or constraining, or even too easy. Most importantly, some students felt stressed about being watched. Therefore, if teachers want to adopt the same procedure, they should make sure they explain as clearly as possible the aims of the use of technology to maximize effectiveness and minimize students’ resistance.

Keywords: Academic Writing; collaborative assessment; Google Docs; guided writing; higher education; literature review
Corresponding author: Francesco Screti, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, E-mail:

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Received: 2022-01-20
Accepted: 2023-01-25
Published Online: 2023-06-05
Published in Print: 2023-05-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2023-2007
Keywords for this article
Academic Writing; collaborative assessment; Google Docs; guided writing; higher education; literature review

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. The fascinating world of language teaching and learning varieties
  4. Research Articles
  5. Aspiring multilinguals or contented bilinguals? University students negotiating their multilingual and professional identities
  6. The (im)possibility of breaking the cycle of rippling circularities affecting Australian language education programs: a Queensland example
  7. Lernen mit LMOOCs im universitären Deutschunterricht: Entscheidungshilfen für Deutschlehrende
  8. Enhance sustainability and environmental protection awareness: agency in Chinese informal video learning
  9. Gamification and learning Spanish as a modern language: student perceptions in the university context
  10. Seeing innovation from different prisms: university students’ and instructors’ perspectives on flipping the Spanish language classroom
  11. Investigating syntactic complexity and language-related error patterns in EFL students’ writing: corpus-based and epistemic network analyses
  12. Using Google Docs for guided Academic Writing assessments: students’ perspectives
  13. Digital storytelling as practice-based participatory pedagogy for English for specific purposes
  14. Is individual competition in translator training compatible with collaborative learning? The case of the MTIE Translation Award
  15. Tackling the elephant in the language classroom: introducing machine translation literacy in a Swiss language centre
  16. Institutionalised autonomisation of language learning in a French language centre
  17. The story of becoming an autonomous learner: a case study of a student’s learning management
  18. The effect of collaborative activities on tertiary-level EFL students’ learner autonomy in the Turkish context
  19. Learner autonomy and English achievement in Chinese EFL undergraduates: the mediating role of ambiguity tolerance and foreign language classroom anxiety
  20. Activity Reports
  21. Lehre am Sprachenzentrum der UZH und der ETH Zürich: Positionspapier
  22. Communication course for future engineers – effective data presentation and its interpretation during LSP courses
  23. Dialogic co-creation in English language teaching and learning: a personal experience
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