Shared documents provide a useful way for students to collaborate asynchronously to analyze and report findings on a group project. Most modern learning management systems provide internal and external tools that allow live shared editing of documents, e.g. wiki pages. There are many free tools instructors can use. A key characteristic that you should look for in a shared document is the ability to review revisions so you can evaluate the performance of each student. My favorite is Google Doc because it provides a revision history allowing the instructor to evaluate each student’s contribution in the project. This link to Google support explains how the revision history works.
Here is an example of this instructional method I used in a graduate MBA course on healthcare information systems at Rockhurst University.
This portion of the course is designed to be a health information primer for future health care executives (text introduction). The purpose is to explore fundamental characteristics of information before diving deeper into information technology.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the major types of health care information (internal and external that are captured or used or both in health care organizations and cite specific examples of the major types of health care information.
- Identify problems associated with poor quality health care data and define the characteristics of data quality.
- Describe the laws, regulations, and standards that govern patient confidentiality.
Assessment Strategy
Students are divided into teams of three to five members to analyze an example of an HCIS document, e.g. healthcare institutional score card. Students work throughout the week asynchronously within a Google shared document. The approach to evaluating the individual contributions of each team member involves:
- Using the revision history to to gage the level of effort among team members. You can display the revision history by opening the shared document and going to File > See Revision History. Here the instructor can see the contributions of team members and can display earlier versions to see how the document evolved based on each person’s contributions.
- Document comments can also be reviewed to see what the intrateam communications was like.
- Using these revision features and the content of the document the instructor uses the grading form to make judgments about each member’s contributions. The weakness of this assessment strategy is that often collaboration occurs outside the document in team meetings, real-time conversations, etc. For this reason the instructor allows students to appeal their grade when they believe it doesn’t accurately represent their work. Students must provide support to their appeal.
Example Grading Rubric
| Objective/Criteria | Performance Indicators | |||
| Accomplished | Competent | Developing | Unacceptable | |
| Individual contribution to the shared knowledge base. | Individual contribution was substantial and set the tone and direction of the team effort. | Made multiple contributions to the shared knowledge base. | Made at least one contribution to the shared knowledge base. | No apparent contribution to the team effort. |
| Team collaboration, analysis and evaluation. | Collaborated with several team members on various aspects of the analysis and evaluation. | Collaborated with at least one other team member on one or more aspects of the analysis and evaluation. | Interacted with one or more team members but lacked depth in collaboration. | No evidence of collaboration or contribution to the analysis and evaluation of the topic. |
| Organization & style of shared product. | Fully contributed to the final deliverable of the team assignment. | Helped edit and create style on the final deliverable. | Made minor edits to the final deliverable. | Contributions within the shared document did not follow group organization and style. |
| Support of team position or conclusions. | Contribution of research evidence strongly linked to team position or conclusions. | Some contributions involved specific support of team conclusions. | Contributions were superficial and did not support the team position or conclusions. | Did not offer any support to team position or conclusions. |
Instructional Strategy
While this instructional method is focused on collaboration using a shared document, it is strategically placed in a team-based learning (TBL) instructional strategy. For more information on TBL see http://www.teambasedlearning.org/. The learning activities are as follows:
Preassignment Activities
- An individual graded online research assignment requires each member to discover and review an article that addresses how HCIS may improve patient care and reduce costs of health care delivery. This prepares the individuals for the shared document collaboration assignment.
The Assignment
- Shared document collaboration assignment: the student team analyzes an example of an information system report, record, or score card in a health care setting. The assignment is may be conducted asynchronously or in team meetings at the discretion of the team. The work is conducted in a Google shared document.
- Students are encouraged to meet in an initial team meeting to set expectations among team members and to communicate back to the instructor with questions.
- The shared document should be created the first day and shared with the instructor. Consider the document as work space for accomplishing the assignment. The instructor will check periodically to see how things are going and may offer consultation along the way.
- The teamwork should be organized into phases. For example data collection, information sharing, communication, drafting and editing, and publishing the final report. Treat the assignment as a project and plan it with milestones. Consider using the shared document, not only as the final report, but also for project control (e.g. individual assignments listed and worked).
- Even if the team meets F2F, students should each particiapte in the document. With Google Docs each team member can participate live at the same time in the shared document. Resist using a recorder or editor as this will delute the individual participation and the document will no longer reflect the collective work.
Post Assignment Activities
- A post assignment that is either conducted in a discussion forum or F2F has the class dive deeper into the data quality and how it affects reporting and patient safety.