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Applied ResearchJessica BehlesFigure 5. Most Used OCWTs (Practitioners)In terms of the practitioners’ specific responses(second coding), the opinion code positive-user friendlywas the most common at 24 mentions. The next mostcommon codes were unintuitive at 12 mentions andclunky at 8 mentions. Of these codes, 49% were positive.For students, 56% of the opinion codes werepositive. Positive-user friendly was the most commonspecific opinion code with 25 mentions. Other commoncodes included negative-lacks features (12 mentions),negative-unintuitive (8 mentions), and positive-useful(7 mentions). According to these results, practitionersappear to feel less positive about OCWTs than theirstudent counterparts.Commonly mentioned OCWTs. This sectionpresents detailed results for the tools themselves.Practitioners mentioned a total of 45 unique OCWTs,not including those I discarded for not fitting thedefinition provided in question 4 of both surveys (forexample, Google Wave). Figure 5 shows the relative andtotal usage for tools mentioned three or more times.A full list of all OCWTs mentioned by respondents isavailable in Appendix B: Student and Practitioner Tools.From left to right, the segments of each barrepresent the number of times each tool was mentionedas the most used, second most used, and third mostused, respectively. The rightmost segment representsinstances where the tool was reported but did not appearas one of the three most used.As seen in the figure, the five tools used most bypractitioners were Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs,company intranet, MediaWiki, and shared databases.Microsoft SharePoint, mentioned by 22respondents, is a centralized content managementsystem for collaboration and document management.In addition to a number of communication functions,Figure 6. Most Used OCWTs (Students)it has a wiki feature and can be run on an intranetor on the Web. This tool is a company standard inmany organizations; therefore, the company’s or theorganization’s IT/engineering team is often responsiblefor choosing this tool. Practitioners used SharePointprimarily for document storage and sharing and projectmanagement. The overall responses were positive, with13 positive, 6 neutral, and 0 negative responses. Positiveuserfriendly was the most common opinion code, whileunintuitive was the most frequently named negativecode.With 19 practitioner respondents naming it, GoogleDocs (an online word processor) was the second mostcommonly used OCWT. Respondents chose it becauseit was free and convenient, and they used it mostcommonly for real-time and asynchronous collaborativewriting. Much like SharePoint, the reaction to GoogleDocs was positive. In terms of overall attitudes, 9 werepositive, 1 was neutral, and 1 was negative. Additionally,there were 9 positive codes and 4 negative codes. Userfriendly was the most common positive code, anddisruptive was the most common negative code.Another apparent standard, company intranetwas mentioned by 13 respondents. The respondents’organization/company chose this tool to be used fordocument storage, scheduling, and collaborative writing.The overall response here was, again, mostly positive:there were 4 positive, 2 neutral, and 1 negative. In termsof individual codes, positive-user friendly had 2 mentions,making it the most common opinion code for this tool.Ten respondents named MediaWiki. This OCWTwas actually one of the earliest wikis, and it is theplatform upon which the popular Wikipedia is run.Often chosen by the organization/company, this toolwas used by practitioners for asynchronous collaborativeVolume 60, Number 1, February 2013 l Technical Communication 35
Applied ResearchUse of Online Collaborative Writing Toolswriting and policies and procedures development.Overall, practitioners liked this tool less than the morecommonly used tools; it received 3 positive, 3 neutral,and 2 negative overall responses. However, it received7 negative codes (it is most seen as inconvenient andunintuitive) and only 3 positive ones.Little can be said about shared databases becausethis OCWT suffers from a lack of data, and fewobservations can be made. Regardless, it appears dislikedby practitioners. In terms of overall reactions, it received4 negative responses, 1 neutral response, and 0 positiveresponses. Out of the negative codes, lacks features wasmentioned most.For students, there were 31 unique tools fittingthe survey’s scope. The total and relative numbers ofresponses are shown in Figure 6.As seen in the figure, the five most often usedtools listed by students were Google Docs, PBWorks,Blackboard, Moodle, and wikis (general)—that is, wikiswith no particular brand named.Google Docs was mentioned by 32 respondents andwas chosen primarily because it was free, had an easyto-useinterface, and had commenting and file sharingfeatures. Students used it primarily for document storageas well as real-time and asynchronous collaborativewriting. The general opinion of Google Docs waspositive overall (17 positive, 5 negative, and 4 neutraloverall responses). In addition, there were 20 positivecodes (the most common being user friendly, convenient,and functional) and 13 negative codes (with lacks featuresas the most common). These data suggest that studentusers of Google Docs were pleased with the tool.The second most mentioned tool (named 14 times)was PBWorks, a wiki formerly known as PBWiki.Students chose it for its commenting feature, for itseasy-to-use interface, and because it was required byprofessors. This tool was used primarily for documentstorage and asynchronous collaboration. Finally,respondents felt slightly positive toward PBWorks, withoverall responses consisting of 4 positive, 4 neutral, and 2negative. The most common positive code (out of 6) wasuser friendly, and the most common negative code (alsoout of 6) was unintuitive—an interesting contradiction.Blackboard is a learning management system (LMS)often used by educational institutions. In addition tocommunication and document storage tools, Blackboardalso has wiki functionality. Seven respondents listedthis tool and frequently chose it because it was requiredfor a class. It was used most often for asynchronouscollaboration and document storage. Although theoverall responses were slightly positive, with 3 positive,3 neutral, and 1 negative, students mentioned 5 negativecodes (the most common being lacks features) and only 3positive codes. These data imply a more neutral opinionof Blackboard.Similar to Blackboard, Moodle is an open sourceLMS; it was mentioned by 6 respondents. Studentsused it because it was required for class; they also used itfor document storage and discussions. Students viewedMoodle positively, with 2 positive, 2 neutral, and 0negative overall responses. Among the 5 positive codeswere feature rich and user friendly; conversely, clunky wasthe only negative code for this tool.Wikis (general) were the fifth most mentioned tools,mentioned by 6 students. Unfortunately, they weretypically listed as third or “other” in terms of relativefrequency, so they have few codes associated with them.All of the opinion responses and opinion codes werepositive, yet because the sample size is so small, it isunclear whether this is an accurate representation ofstudents’ opinions of this tool.DiscussionWithin this section, I analyze in more detail theobservations I have drawn from the data presentedin the previous section. I open the section with adiscussion of certain considerations that readers shouldbe aware of when examining my results. I then discussthe practitioners’ responses, followed by the students’,and close the section with a comparative look at bothsets of data.ConsiderationsThis section contains the considerations for andlimitations of my survey results in terms of theiraccuracy and representation of technical communicationstudents and practitioners.There may have been some skewing of my resultsdue to the surveys being circulated within specificcommunities like schools and companies. For instance,if a school required students to use Blackboard, everyrespondent from that school would list it, possibly36 Technical Communication l Volume 60, Number 1, February 2013
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