Collaborative documents like Google Docs allow students to share and edit their work in real time, thus enabling the benefits of collaborative learning. These include the ability to exchange knowledge with peers and extend one’s understanding and perspectives in the process. Below we outline a number of ways that you can use collaborative documents with your students in asynchronous activities.

• Have students respond in small groups to prompts as they watch pre-recorded lectures or other media in a collaborative document. This helps to focus their attention while watching and allows them to see how other students made meaning of the content.
•  Use Google Slides or Docs to have students post artifacts like concept maps, images, posters, or infographics. They can comment on each other’s contributions and save the document as a reference.
• Have students collaborate in shared documents to create graphic organizers such as Venn diagrams, mind maps, or pros and cons lists.
• Assign group writing projects using Google Docs so that students can edit in real time and track changes.
  
  

To store all your documents in one place, you can create a folder within your Google Drive and set the permissions so that all students can access the folder or directly send them a link to add to the folder.

To get started with Google Drive and Documents, please visit Google Drive Help.