Tech savvy educators are very fond of keyboard shortcuts, because shortcuts save them time, but in some countries there is a problem in Google Docs on a Windows PC.
Providing formative feedback on students’ written assignments is a key task in all kinds of education. One educators invest a lot of time in. During a school year, many spend +200 work hours marking papers — and produce 20,000–30,000 feedback comments for students on their written work.
BUT shortcuts with a Google Docs — Windows PC combination is hopeless in some countries (eg. Denmark, Norway, and probably many more).
The default Google Docs shortcut to insert a comment (Ctrl + Alt + M) instead of inserting a comment replaces the selected text with the symbol µ (my).
Reason? In these countries the default keyboard on a PC has the µ symbol as the default Ctrl + Alt + M result.
Obviously, Google was not aware of this when assigning this shortcut in Google Docs.
So, teachers who give feedback on a PC in Google Docs cannot be as efficient as they could be. 20,000–30,000 times during a school year they have to waste a second by instead using a mouse or a touchpad.
Does anyone know of a simple fix for this? If not — who should fix it? Google or Microsoft?
Changing to a pure US layout will not solve the problem, as it would make it impossible to use 3 of the 9 vowels in these countries.
The Edword team
PS.
Btw… the English term for the character inserted by means of Ctrl +Alt or AltGr?
