The Hong Kong Association for Self-Access Learning and Development (HASALD) would like to invite you to attend the following seminar:
Is more interaction always better in group writing? Evidence participation patterns in Google Docs
by Dr Mik Fanguy
Online collaborative writing is a widespread learning approach in higher education, but practitioners still ask a basic question: does more interaction in platforms like Google Docs actually lead to better writing and stronger individual performance? In this talk, I will report findings from an online graduate scientific writing course in which students first completed a timed Google Docs group task to draft a Discussion and Conclusion section and then submitted an individual Discussion and Conclusion draft for their own research. Using Google Docs revision histories, we examined simple indicators of collaboration, including total text contribution, turn taking frequency, and the evenness of these behaviors across group members.
Results showed that groups who wrote more overall tended to earn higher group writing scores, and groups with more evenly shared writing volume also performed better. By contrast, more frequent switching between authors was associated with lower group scores. For individual outcomes, students who personally drafted more text during the group task tended to score higher on the later individual writing assignment, whereas being in a highly interactive group did not translate into stronger individual performance. We also identified a recognizable collaboration style, “Sultan and Advisors,” in which one student drafts most of the text while others contribute frequent smaller edits. This pattern was associated with weaker subsequent individual performance, particularly for lower-proficiency students, and with larger proficiency-linked gaps in gains. The talk concludes with practical ways to structure Google Docs tasks so that more students engage in substantive drafting rather than primarily reactive editing.
About the speaker:
Mik Fanguy is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests include collaborative learning and writing in online instructional settings.
- Date & Time: 12 May 2026, 6:00 to 7:00 PM
- Venue: HHB926,PolyU Hung Hom Bay Campus (Department of English and Communication)
Please register here by 10 May if you wish to attend this talk.
Thank you, and we hope to see you at our next talk!
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