What type of collaboration helps?: Psychological ownership, perceived learning and outcome quality of collaboration using Google Docs

One hundred and eighteen Open University of Israel undergraduate students
participated in an experiment that was designed to test the differences
between sharing and collaborating on a written assignment. Participants were
randomly allocated to one of five groups that differ in types of collaboration:
two groups share their draft with either an unknown audience or known
peers, two other groups collaborated by either suggesting improvements to or
editing each other's draft, and an additional group in which the participants
kept the draft for themselves served as a control group. Findings revealed
differences between groups in psychological ownership, perceived quality of
the document, but not in perceived learning. In addition, students believe that
a document that was written collaboratively might have higher quality than a
document written alone. Nonetheless, they reported that while their
contribution improved a draft written by a colleague, the colleague’s
contribution deteriorated their own draft. Perceived quality of the document
and the improvement from draft to final version predicted perceived learning.
Thus, the present study implications are that collaboration is superior to
sharing, that students prefer suggestion over editing.