GROUP WORK AND THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF THE USE

OF GOOGLE APPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION

Jannat Maqbool

Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The use of group work in teaching practices has been well supported in educational theories however the researcher has

experienced a number of issues or areas of concern in having students work in groups to complete a major assessment for

a second year Project Management course at a leading polytechnic in New Zealand. Factors potentially influenced by the

majority of students having English as their second language, the inexperience of the Lecturer in facilitating group work

and the lack of tools available to or recommended for students to use in facilitating collaboration and managing the

group assignment. The research is aimed at identifying and clarifying what, if any impact, using Google Sites has on

group work within a cohort of students undertaking the project management course.

KEYWORDS

Group work, Google, Google Sites, Collaborative Learning

1. INTRODUCTION

The use of group work in teaching practices has been well supported in educational theories pertaining to the

“importance of interaction between social, affective and cognitive states in development and learning”

(Blatchford, 2003). Group work aims to develop intellectual understanding, abilities and skills;

communication, cooperative and teamwork skills; personal and professional growth; and reflective practices

as well as encourage those involved in group work to be more independent and take ownership of their own

The paper also requires students to complete a summative assessment half way through the semester and

another at the end of the semester, in the form of a Test and Exam. Both assessments are individual

assessments and weighted at 25% and 30% respectively. During the semester students also participate in two

online forum discussions as a group and this is assessed at 15% of their module mark. By the end of the

semester students should understand the basic principles and terminology of the profession of project

management and how to apply these to create project plans.

In previous semesters a number of issues and areas of concerns were identified related to the group work

component of this course. Some of these issues were: group members not pulling their weight, break downs

in communication, lack of cohesion in the final output, alienation and/or exclusion of group members,

general confusion regarding objectives and progress, versioning issues and files being lost, and dominance

Factors that contribute to these issues and concerns include the fact that the majority of students are

second language speakers of English, the convenor’s inexperience at facilitating group work and the lack of

tools available to or recommended for students to use in facilitating collaboration and managing the

administrative aspects of group work. Postholm (2004) also identified difference in living conditions,

education, life and work experience as having an influence.

This research is primarily interested in the problematic experience of students in coordinating or

managing the administration element of group work, including scheduling meetings, corresponding,

communicating and managing documentation, and further incorporating the challenges of collaborating as a

group to produce a coherent and cohesive output.

2. THE STUDY

The tool they used was applications provided by Google which includes applications for email, calendar,

real-time word processing, file and document storage, instant messaging and Voice of Internet Protocol

(VOIP), and Google Sites which can be used to develop a structured wiki. All of these can be accessed

online, from any device with an Internet connection and can provide “a whole new way to work together

online” (Google, 2016).

Development of a wiki was the first deliverable of the group assignment and represented 20% of the

overall group assignment mark. This component of the assignment was designed as a scaffolding exercise to

enable students to experience working together as a group to deliver an output as a minor project within the

overall group assignment. In their groups and supported by the researcher in the role of facilitator students

would be involved in constructing knowledge and working through a problem-based activity in developing

major assessment. At the following weeks session students were asked to work in their assigned groups and

construct a bridge from wooden sticks and other material. This exercise was designed to start the group

thinking about how the group development model applied to their situation as an illustration of at least the

initial stages of the model.

The research is aimed at identifying and clarifying what impact using Google applications has on group

work when it’s used to manage documents, communication and collaboration, amongst other elements of

project administration.

It is envisaged that the use of a tool will also facilitate more effective assessment of individual

contribution and overall participation in group work. The use of technology to screen individual contribution

and/or group contribution may assist in reducing the incidence of social loafing; exerting less effort when

end with a random selection of the cohort as a representative sample.

3. DATA COLLECTION

The study involved thirty three students, divided into seven groups of between 4-5 students in Week 3, of a

14 week semester. Members of the student cohort were undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Operations and

Production, Sales and Marketing or Event Management. Three of the students were domestic students and the

remainder of the cohort was made up of international students from India (24) and China (6).

There was a considerable amount of diversity in the students’ ethnic and cultural background, work

experience, subject major of previous qualification, subject major in their current course of study and their

spoken English proficiency. This information was obtained as part of an icebreaker exercise in Week 1 when

students were asked to introduce themselves to the class. Furthermore, one of the course requirements was

style environment that has seating for up to 40 students. The first hour of this session was a lecture where the

researcher covered theoretical subject matter. The room then enabled students to rearrange furniture into a

setting more suited to group work, and to comfortably interact and work within their groups on the group

assignment for the last hour. Students were then moved to a computer lab for the final hour of the weekly

session where they learnt to use MS Project for the first half of the semester and were able to then use this

time to work on their group assignment online during the second half of the semester.

From a qualitative primarily exploratory perspective, the researcher in their role as facilitator was able to

talk to and observe students during these weekly face-to-face in class group work sessions. Although the

majority of the group work was conducted by students outside of the classroom the weekly sessions did

enable the researcher to observe interactions amongst members of the group and identify strengths and

and how to access and/or use the platform for the purposes of completing the required group assignment

output. This latter element was more common during the second half of the semester when the computer lab

sessions were able to be used to work on the group assignment in the Google applications environment.

It was important for the researcher that during the one-hour (and then two hour) group work component

of the weekly sessions they remain in the role of a facilitator only and use the time to observe groups as they

worked through the stages of group development, used the Google platform and developed the assessment

requirements.

The researcher was also able to view a log of recent activity on each Google Site. This provided the name

of the user logged in, the date and time of the activity, and a summary of the activity undertaken. There was

however no indication of how long the user had been logged in and there appeared to be, perhaps due to the

asked to sign a Participant Consent Form.

The focus group was designed to gain a deeper understanding of student perceptions, and any underlying

reasons, motives or influencing factors, related to the impact on group work, if any, of the sample using

Google applications for project administration and facilitating collaboration and communication in

completing the group assignment assessment. The sessions provided an opportunity to ask specific questions

to build on evidence obtained from the researchers own observations.

4. RESULTS

The pilot study, as the research can now be referred, found that the adoption of the collaborative nature of the

tool was ad hoc amongst groups. There was only evidence of one group that worked online simultaneously,

from separate locations, at various times, during the semester to collaborate on and develop the assignment

output. This group developed the site and assignment output primarily through online collaboration. There

was evidence, as observed using the Recent Activity information in the Google Site, of every group member

participating and making a contribution. This group work was not evident as predominately during class

room group work sessions given two of the five group members were not able to attend most weeks of the

semester due to the hours they were working in paid employment. Interestingly one group member, who was

comments feature on pages in the Google Site if they required some assistance, feedback or clarification with

respect to a piece of work.

This group was also the only group that used Google Hangouts in conjunction with Google Sites and a

member of the group identified that they found it useful being able to have their Google Hangouts

conversation running at the same time as working on a Google Doc within the Google Site. This was

important as not all the group members were able to meet on a regular basis in person and so having an

online environment that enabled the members to discuss content and develop it at the same time was essential

to allowing the group to complete the assessment requirements.

With respect to Google Hangouts however the group members felt that they were not able to freely

communicate using the platform, with the knowledge that the lecturer had access to their conversations.

compared to many of the other groups the standard of the final project plan was much lower than that

required for an A grade.

Another group discussed each component of the assignment output at a face-to-face session each week,

agreed on what would be written for that component in the assignment and then assigned the task of

developing the Google Doc to a different group member each week. In this way, as explained by the Group

Leader present at the focus group, they worked to ensure that everyone contributed to the assignment and

worked as a team in producing the required output. During assessment, each member’s contribution was clear

because the researcher could see who had participated in the online environment. The researcher was also

able to observe similar cohesion during in-class group work sessions. As a result, their group output was

cohesive; similar font and formatting, as well as language style, was used throughout.

they were able to work together so effectively. Other factors that may have influenced this group is that a

domestic student and an exchange student from South America were members of the group. The domestic

student may have had previous learning experience that utilized collaborative instruments. The exchange

student was eager and motivated to understand the Kiwi way of learning. She was also very interested in

getting to know people from different cultures and backgrounds. One member of the group felt that

face-to-face sessions were essential since for most of the members of the group English was a second

initially experienced difficulty in configuring the site and a member of the group admitted they initially

questioned why use of the site in completing the group assignment was required at all. The group then moved

through this by watching instructional videos together and then working together to configure and customize

the environment. Members of the group present at the focus group acknowledged that they then soon came to

appreciate the ability to upload documents and have other members of the group review them and make

comments or suggestions. Although there was only little evidence of the group members working

simultaneously the group did use the Google Site regularly for document management and some

collaboration during the semester and although they did not use Google Hangouts the group did include

screenshots from instant messaging conversations from an online communication application they were using

to communicate outside of face-to-face sessions. The application used was Facebook including Facebook

Messenger since all members of the group had access to and were familiar with it. Interestingly there were

far fewer instances of online messaging then face-to-face meetings, the minutes of which were also stored in

the Google Site, since all members of the group were able to commit to weekly meetings and attend in-class

group work sessions perhaps due to the fact that only one member of the group was a part-time student and in

given the timeframe available to meet the assessment requirements and the conflict that had arisen and was

in the group being awarded a C minus grade overall for the group assignment.

The remaining three groups mostly only used the Google Site to upload documents developed offline or

to develop parts of the required project plan as separate documents that were then combined as a printed

version for submission. Their sites were also simple in structure however activity, albeit still minimal at

times, was more frequent and involved all members of the group. The researcher also observed, during in

class group work sessions, that there was evidence of the group having moved to the norming if not

performing stage, in one case, of the group development model. As such there was discussion,

acknowledgement and acceptance of individual contribution, and on occasions when the researcher was

asked to take part in or contribute during group work sessions there was evidence of group cohesion. As a

result, these three groups were awarded a higher mark for the group work/participation component of the

assessment and this together with their mark for the group assignment output, although not as comprehensive

or cohesive as the first two groups, resulted in two of the groups being awarded a B minus and one a C

overall for the group assignment. One of these groups commented that having all the relevant files and

documents stored centrally was useful given members of the group were rarely in contact face-to-face outside