Systems Analysis and Design Group Projects: Turning Google Drive into a Student’s Friend Emre Erturk Eastern Institute of Technology (New Zealand) emre.erturk@faculty.umuc.edu (UMUC, USA) eerturk@eit.ac.nz EXTENDED ABSTRACT Due to its popularity and cost-free nature, Google Drive is a natural collaboration tool among students, and a practical repository for systems development and documentation. Meanwhile, effective group work is an essential skill for students for becoming work ready. Information technology (IT) students are often involved in sharing and editing documents together. In the Bachelor of Computing Systems degree at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) New Zealand, students form small teams, in which they carry out a group project in Systems Analysis and Design (SA&D). On the other hand, the eventual success of these teams is not a foregone conclusion, especially in a challenging project requiring both good social and IT skills. Easy to use and featuring a range of supporting applications, Google Drive has been advocated to facilitate the SA&D process. Furthermore, there have been other institutions that have reported positive experiences with Google Drive (previously known as Google Docs). For example, according to Rowe, Bozalek, and Frantz (2013), online collaboration using Google Drive enhanced the students’ learning experience by providing a means for interaction, and an autonomous space outside of the classroom. Cloud based applications (e.g. Google Drive) are also a common way of deploying mobile (anywhere) learning (Erturk, 2013). Open educational resources have often been seen as providing greater flexibility to the end users – educators and students alike (Koohang & Harman, 2005). Therefore, Google Drive is one of many recent examples within the long-term trend of using open resources in education. As is sometimes common, the literature here tends to publicize the successful experiences and seems not to cover the more difficult cases (or only does so after the problems are sorted out) even if problems may exist in real life for many schools as well as other nonacademic users. In 2013, some qualitative feedback on using Google Drive was collected for the first time from SA&D students at EIT. The mixed nature of this initial feedback (reflecting both positive and negative experiences) triggered a further inquiry as to the factors behind the varying levels of satisfaction and success among students using this tool during their Systems Analysis and Design project. These factors include how well they understand the tool itself, their level of commitment to the tool, and the ways in which they choose to use Google Drive. The last of these factors (how they use the tool) includes strategies and choices regarding ownership, sharing, and editing (Blau & Caspi, 2009). This current study has continued the investigation with the aim of better understanding, promoting, and improving the collaborative use of Google Drive among SA&D students. A new multistage survey has been conducted in 2014 during the course of a systems analysis and design group project in order to investigate the influence of the above factors on student satisfaction and success with Google Drive through. The design of the questions and the Likert scale in the survey is partly based on Perlman’s USE questionnaire (n.d.). The first part of the survey was given early in the course in order to understand the students’ initial levels, and to help provide better instructions and support as they began undertaking the group projects. Toward the end of the course, a follow-up feedback evaluation was done to understand the progress made, and the students’ final thoughts. The results are also significant because the lessons learned here will provide realistic insights and suggestions for best practices for using Google Drive to collaborate in SA&D projects in the workplace. Finally, using this technology effectively fits into the connectivist paradigm, which is a recent and internet centric learning theory (Anderson, 2010). When it is implemented with good pedagogical goals and reinforced with technical assistance, the technology helps students form closer connections with each other outside of the classroom. These connections will also continue after the course, as a natural part of their Google circles and accounts.