Google docs used for before-class activities

Having used Google docs for in-class activities and having found it really useful, I wanted to try to use it for out of class asynchronous preparation for a challenging class. The goal of the class was to start the process of synthesizing all of the physical processes they had been thinking about into a picture of how galaxy formation works.

I decided on the following plan:

• Have the students do an activity where they describe their understanding of how a dark matter halo of a given mass forms, how it gets its gas from the intergalactic medium, what kind of galaxy lives in the center of the halo, what lives in the subhalos, etc. [I know this is technical gibberish, apologies - those are good questions that help them assemble the pieces of information and physical processes that they need to know for understanding how the galaxies in that halo works]. I had three groups, each with a different halo (=galaxy) mass. Each group had a different page on the same google doc (to stop too much editing on a single page). 
• They were asked to fill their part of the document out before class asynchronously and collaboratively, and I kept an eye on this process, asking leading questions or offering clarifications. 
• I added a final section where they were invited to write their questions [I have an area for writing questions down in all pre-class assignments, but they've never been public to the whole group before; I think you want to have a certain level of trust in the class before doing this?]. I worked on answering their questions, which in some cases turned into a nice dialog.
• They spent 10 minutes at the beginning of class in their expert groups coming to a consensus and identifying common questions.
• Then we discussed as a large group their answers, drawing parallels and creating links between their three different examples. 
• One of the particular topics we discussed was used to segue into a mini-lecture on an important physical process that they had not explored yet that was relevant for just one of the cases, this was pre-planned but worked out quite naturally.

I felt like this use of Google Docs was also very worthwhile. Almost all students engaged well with the exercise, they were able to do their activity in increments, making progress in the areas they understood, asking questions and getting feedback [from peers and myself] in areas they were less sure about, and being able to take their time to come to a better and more complete understanding of how their galaxy works. They were very well prepared for class, and our group discussion was very efficient, focused on common concerns and high-level synthesis.