Educational Technology at Brevard College: Blog

View Student Writing Using Draftback

It's not every day that a tool makes you feel like you have superpowers.  Draftback is one of those tools.  It plays back all of the revisions made to a Google Doc as a movie, allowing you to skip forward and backward through time to see all the steps that went into writing the document.  So, a student can submit a paper to you and by using Draftback, you get a little video showing the whole essay writing process from a blank page all the way to the finished product.  It's like being some kind of time lord.  Needless to say, it can help with catching content that is just copy/pasted in.  It's not exactly an AI killer, but it's a good security layer.  Also, for our writing instructors, you'll get to see the full essay development process and that could be quite insightful.

So how does it work?

First, there are three criteria that need to be met:

• The document must be written in Google Docs.
• Use Chrome as your browser.
• You'll need to have editing rights on the document.

Grab the Draftback Chrome plugin using this link.

Once added to Chrome, click the Draftback button within a Google Doc to generate the video. Enjoy your newfound powers (use them responsibly.)

Things to keep in mind

Some students will not like this.  It's understandable for students to not like the idea that the instructor is watching their writing process.  I know that I certainly would feel a bit uncomfortable if all of you were looking over my shoulder and seeing all the spelling errors I'm making while typing this up.

There are legitimate reasons why a student may type something up in one program and then copy/paste it into a Google Doc.

If you plan on using this tool:

• Teach the students how to share editing rights on their documents.
• Let them know ahead of time that you'll be using it.
• Inform them that you expect their writing to be done directly within the Google Doc.

This video does a great job showing you how to use the tool.

Side note, if you wanna geek out, the creator of this tool wrote a great piece showing the process involved in developing this tool.  Check it out here.