Google Docs as a means of collaborative writing in teacher education

Abstract

The significant challenge for teacher educators in providing feedback is how to make it understood and useful for student-teachers to revise their writing. Therefore, a more dialogic or interactive interaction is on demand to make it a meaningful feedback. As giving face-to-face feedback often spends a plenty of time, electronic feedback (e-feedback) is an option. However, research on investigating e-feedback in collaborative writing is still rare. Thus, this paper aims at describing how e-feedback built an interactive interaction among student-teachers and teacher educators in promoting a collaborative writing. This research was situated in a private university in Indonesia. Drawn from teacher educators’ written feedback on 15 student-teachers’ academic writing in Google Docs, several issues were identified: (1) teacher educators’ interactive feedback which promoted student-teachers’ engagement and discussion among them, and (2) student-teachers’ preferences in taking and negotiating to the feedback and revision. Both pedagogical implication and further research are also discussed. The study discusses pedagogical implications for teacher educators in promoting interactive and dialogic feedback practices in writing courses.