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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Experiences Learned from Google Docs ( Continued)

More experiences gathered from using google docs.
I realized that when I looked at revision history, it was very difficult to understand who changed what. Although revision history stated who changed what. To me, it was still difficult compared to PBWorks. I felt the interface was still difficult for me to understand and if someone clicks to restore, the version will go back to the version we choose to restore but the problems are that we want to remain some changes others make.What I am saying is that if we want to delete some changes A makes but we want to remain what B changes, it was difficult to see how I am going to keep the editorA , and the editorc work changes without keeping part of changes B made. It is really hard to control the paper once the big big group edits together. In case we all 5 people edit at the same time, and let's say that our group has captain who has power to override the rest. What I mean is that if I want Ora to be the most powerful editor or chief editor, what am I going to do here? Of course not.
Google Docs treats everyone on an equal basis.

Apart from that, you only need to have gmail in order to use it so it is a waste of time for group participants which do not have individual gmails. They have to go to open a new account. I believe that google doc should support hotmail, yahoo mail,etc but again it is company's strategy.

There is no calendar linked or planned calendar for team collaboration. There should be calendar alert for team collaboration. For instance, if I said " whoever changes my sentences has to alert me", it will be better for me to monitor my words. In case someone changes it, google doc has to alert me that editor A changes my words. You know why. Sometimes some words are very important to someone but someone else.

There should be post-it paper noted that this sentence or this is paragraph we need to focus as our team's first priority. If the member does not act on that priority, the system will alert the second person to do the work instead. Or, there must be a subtask of edit which a person has to do prior to moving into next pages of work.
There is no priority of tasks assigned on edit empowered by googled doc.

When people do not have much time to work together, there should be tracking alert of work by series of due dates. Say paragraph 1 has to be finished by date XXXX and ora is responsible to close with her summary or to check APA style. Paragraph 2 has to be finished by date XXX by another person. Mindmap should be helpful in this to confirm the check of final closing

1 comment:

  1. Very insightful observations on how to organize collaborative work!

    ReplyDelete