Abstract:

Whole-class co-creation is defined as inviting a whole group of students who are studying together in any teaching setting to actively collaborate and negotiate with the teacher and with each other one or more elements of the learning process. This study reports on the practice of using shared Google Docs as both platform for and instantiation of whole-class co-creation of the syllabus and the daily lesson plans in an undergraduate course situated in an Education Studies Department at a college in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

The study employed a combination of literature review, autoethnography, and narrative analysis to explore the instructor’s and the enrolled students’ experiences of whole-class co-creation of two typically instructor-designed structures: the syllabus distributed at the start of the semester as a guide for students to meet course requirements, and the daily lesson plans used as a guide for what the instructor plans to do during each class session. Previous research findings provide context for reconceptualizing these structures, shifting them from instructor controlled to elements of the course upon and through which instructor and students actively collaborated and negotiated.

In relation to the syllabus, results reveal that the distribution of a draft syllabus as a shared Google Doc before the start of the course and the invitation to all enrolled students to add comments on the Doc (and address one another’s comments) changed the syllabus from what one enrolled student called the “unchangeable law handed down to us from the all-powerful professor” that he experienced in other courses to what another enrolled student described as “a continuous scaffold for the course” that all enrolled students “filled out to create its eventual form.”

In relation to the daily lesson plans, results indicate that the instructor offering minimal outlines of each class session in a shared Google Doc as a starting place and inviting enrolled students to actively fill in the outlines with insights from readings they completed, recommendations for approaches to completing course assignments, and reflections on their learning through class activities as each class session unfolded shifted lesson plans from prepared and instructor-controlled plans to real-time co-creations. As one enrolled student said: “from the very first assignment, our voices were sought out and valued.” The lesson plans become living, dynamic, inclusive documents that captured student contributions to a process, in another enrolled student’s words, of “building curriculum together” through “shared agency.”

Taken together, these two forms of co-creation through the use of shared Google Docs positioned instructors and students to collaborate on two structures—the syllabus and lesson plans—that support negotiation and enactment of the learning process. As another enrolled student explained, being afforded the agency to co-create these structures and how they are used to support learning “gives each person the power to engage and to think about why,” thereby deepening engagement, fostering a sense of empowerment, and developing meta-cognitive awareness. Conclusions from this study include recommendations from both the instructor and students for how this approach can be applied across levels of education and academic disciplines.

Keywords:

Co-creation, Google Docs, syllabi, lesson plans.