Google Docs has been my choice for collaborative document editing for some time now, but this past week a new feature was added, that will make the process of collaborating on a single document even less painful.  If you and your classmates are working on your project document at the same time, the text that others in your group are adding or editing will be highlighted so you can easily see the changes as they are made, and make sure you’re not inadvertently working on the same section of the document.

Not only does collaborative highlighting show you where you classmates are working, but it will also show you when they highlight blocks of text, so you can watch to see if the text get deleted or moved.  I wish I’d been able to use Google Docs when I was a Bachelor of Commerce student continually working on group projects!

Some of the other features that college students will appreciate are:

• Footnotes and Endnotes
• Table of Contents tool
• Inline Thesaurus and Dictionary lookups
• Add new words to a Custom Dictionary
• Auto save every few seconds

Enjoy!