Gen Z, Google Suite, and Platform Persistence in the Digital Age

As a composition instructor and proposal writer, I use the Microsoft 365 productivity platform suite daily.1 Of its core apps, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint Presentation are my favorite, and the advantage offered by the advanced tools and features of Word and PowerPoint, which can help polish and refine one’s writings and presentations, has been a strong impetus for me to promote their usage to students in my composition courses. Of the two, I promote Microsoft Word most often. But why do I insist on Word? I insist on Microsoft 365, and Word in particular, because I want my students to expand their use of productivity platform suites.

I am especially interested in the way students format their papers and their use of styles when writing. The Styles Pane, which lets users preview, manage, and customize the text styles in Word, and offers users a plethora of options to create entirely new custom formats that can then be reapplied as shortcuts, is a feature that I cannot do without as a proposal writer. While Google Docs lets users customize heading styles, styles options are very limited on this platform compared to Word. The advanced features of Word, such as Editor, which helps writers check for spelling, grammar, and other writing suggestions, makes it very attractive. But even with direct instruction to use Word, my students seem to have a hard time doing it. Instead, they persist in using Google Docs.

This was a surprise. The way I see it, the Editor feature of Word is more advanced than Google Docs. Based on my experience as a composition instructor and proposal writer who uses both Google Docs and Word, the latter offers a broader toolkit to students interested in professional and technical writing. Of course, these are not the sole reasons students take my composition courses, although I must say that my background as a proposal writer also influences my preference toward Word. This being said, I do use Google Docs for collaborative activities in my class, just not for essay assignment submissions. As a proposal writer, I also use Google Suites every day. I inform my students of my professional and academic background so that they understand that I understand them and their predetermined preference for Google Docs.

During the course orientation week and on the first day of class, my strategy has always been to refer to the section of my course syllabus where I lay out the instructions on how I want my students to submit essays and the formats that I will accept. Below is an excerpt from one of my composition syllabi at Oakton College:

As shown in the excerpt above, I provide information on the type of document format I want all my students to submit assignments in in my course. Since instructions have been stated on my course syllabus, and since students are mindful that failure to abide by these instructions would result in them being penalized, I saw little to no reason they would not comply.

But the challenge was not that they did not want to comply. It is that for many of my Gen Z students it was a “culture shock,” something that was going to take them time to process; for it was not one of the document formats they used to submit assignments at the K-12 level. There are other reasons why students prefer Google Docs, which I usually find out when I take a hands-on approach to assisting them with downloading Microsoft 365. Some college students have a lot going on with their other classes and their personal lives and admit to me that they never read the syllabus. Some tell me that their other teachers let them submit essays as PDFs. As much as it saddens me, my class and my instructions are just one of a series of classes they are taking, along with other responsibilities they must manage in a semester.

Before I account for the mistakes I have made and what I would do differently when introducing my students to productivity platform suites like Microsoft 365, consider four categories of students who use different devices/mechanisms to submit assignments in my composition courses:

• Student A: The Chromebook Users (Google Docs)
• Student B: The iPhone Users (Apple Pages)
• Student C: The PDF Document Submitters (Converted from Google Docs)
• Student D: The Friendly Email Invitation to Edit Document Senders (Resulting from Sharing Google Docs)

Based on the categories above, it is not hard to imagine conflicts, misunderstandings, and frustrations between my students (who run afoul of my assignment submission policy) and I. Here are some learning moments from which I extracted valuable lessons to help navigate students through the use of productivity platform suites in the classroom.

First, I misjudged the challenges my students would run into as they sought to download the software or use a web version of it. I believed it was sufficient to guide my students through course orientations, specifically note where in the syllabus they could find instructions on how to submit an assignment on Brightspace (D2L), and detail a step-by-step process to download Microsoft Office 365. But then there were technical issues that my syllabus instructions did not foresee. When approached on these matters, I directed students who reached out to me with complaints to “contact tech support on campus for additional help.” This usually settles the problem. But I have had students tell me “I figured it out by myself” and then go on to use the tech support resources on campus.

Second, I took the technical struggles some of my students would run into as they tried to convert documents across platforms from Google Docs to Word too lightly. As a Mac user myself, the interface for Office 365 is somewhat different from that of Office 365. Students who I knew to be very hardworking and diligent, and who had downloaded the latest version of Office 365 on their Mac laptops, raised genuine concerns over technical issues related to formatting and the display of marginal comments on their documents.

Some students tried to find a way around using Word. Knowledgeable about the features of Docs, students would "Download > Microsoft Word" from the file tab and submit their essays. But I continually find students running into serious formatting issues in their converted Word document essays, especially essays which require a lot of formatting and styles (e.g. research essays and annotated bibliography assignments). From the panicked emails of students who are diligent with formatting and styles instructions but encounter issues when converting their document to Word, to those who submit essays with disorganized paragraphs and unformatted (or poorly formatted) Works Cited pages, I have observed a range of student attitudes over the years. As a proposal writer, I have firsthand experience of this problem, as do many of the writers with whom I work. The conversion of Google Docs into Word results in more revisions than we can track.

Third, I underestimated the impact of Google Workspace on my students’ technological literacy in the classroom. Many K-12 students have years of experience using one or more of Google Workspace’s productivity tools and apps and none with Microsoft Office Suite. When these K-12 students enter college, they can wax eloquent on their use of Google Classroom and how it has helped them in their assignments and projects, yet they barely have experience using Microsoft 365. So, when I expected a wholesale acceptance of Office 365, a productivity platform suite that many first-year students are encountering for the first time or have never heard of prior to enrollment in college, there was bound to be some pushback, some intentionally, and some due to lack of experience. It was quite naïve of me; the Googlification of K-12 classrooms was going to have implications for students who came out of that system (Singer 2017).

Fourth, I had downplayed the fact that many students today have literally bought into Google through their devices. I was not sensitive to this educational-cultural phenomenon until I observed their response to my assignment submission policy. This understanding of my students’ technological background, and their choice of computer devices, tools, and productivity platform suites, has made me tread lightly on this topic. Outside of Google Workspace, few students are aware of the range of productivity platform suites, including Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, WPS, Open Office, Word Perfect, and more. It is common to come across a student, particularly a minority student (this is not exclusive to them), who tells me that they are using the Chromebook which they used in high school for their college work.

This is not to downplay the usefulness of Chromebooks but they are designed with Google Workspace productivity tools and applications in mind. Though Chromebooks are cost effective for many pupils in K-12, they work best in such settings, especially where Google Workspace productivity tools and apps are used (CDW Expert 2022). They are powered by the internet, and students cannot do much without it. They use cloud-based storage systems and work best when students are online or with Wi-Fi access (CDW Expert 2022). Microsoft Office 365 software apps cannot be downloaded or used on Chromebooks, even though regular Android devices can accommodate its apps/software (Liron Segev 2022). Students do not have the flexibility to download every app they would have access to on a Windows or Mac laptop or desktop. They can do so, however, through office.com, which lets them use Microsoft Office online for free. While this seemingly offers a temporary solution to the problem, formatting on students’ documents tends to get lost between Office online and Office on desktop apps.

Many students in first-year college composition classes today now have the choice to use productivity platform suites outside of the ones imposed on them at the K-12 level. While the use of Google Workspace and its platform apps is a no brainer for many of them, it is not so much the case with Microsoft 365 apps. I have had to grant exceptions to my students to submit documents in a PDF format during the first week of class as they problem solve to download and adapt to the software. If we desire to get our students on board with our productivity suite of choice in a classroom, we not only must understand their various attitudes and background toward productivity platform suites, but their attitudes towards technology in general, carefully supporting them to make a smooth transition from one productivity platform suite to another.

Over the years, I have continued to learn from my students’ various responses to my promotion of Microsoft 365, and Word in particular, in the classroom. I no longer expect my course orientations and reminders about assignment submission policies on the first day or week of class to do the job. While many of my students make a smooth transition from Google Suite to Microsoft 365 once I ask them to do so, there are always a few students who disregard (or forget) the assignment instructions due to one reason or another. I take a more hands-on approach to assist them with problem-solving. To better prepare my students and reduce the number of excuses that they will give me, I create tutorial videos on how I use Office 365 applications, especially Word and PowerPoint, as a professional. I share numerous tutorials from YouTube on how they can download Microsoft 365, especially tutorials from Microsoft and former Microsoft professionals, send friendly reminder emails to the general class, send individual reminders to specific students who I know are still struggling with the instructions, and create other scaffolding activities during class time in which I explain to students what they can expect when I give them feedback on their papers.

While many of my students may persist in their preference for a platform due to its use in the K-12 institutions they attended, I will persist in helping them broaden their context for writing using various productivity suites, including Office 365, in a college classroom. Many students will likely be exposed to other productivity platform suites in the workplace after graduation from college should they find work in a setting where writing constitutes a major part of their job responsibility. And that is something of which they can quickly see the value. Two generations ago, the options for writing software were limited. One generation ago, the options proliferated. With so many options for productivity suites, why limit yourself and your students to one?