The ILIAS object "Etherpad" is a collaborative writing tool that can be used for synchronous collaboration in groups. For this purpose, the etherpad provides a digital writing pad on which all persons having access to it can write simultaneously. You probably know this format from commercial providers such as google docs.

The etherpad can be used for many scenarios in which the collaborative work of groups and teams is in the foreground. It can be used for brainstorming, writing a text together, or collecting topics. Thus, the tedious sending of Word documents in different versions is no longer necessary, and the results/suggestions are always immediately visible to everyone involved.

In many seminar contexts, part of the joint seminar work consists of the preparation of presentation topics by groups of students. In many cases, students are asked to write a handout with the most important results of their presentation topic.
 
By using an etherpad, the student groups can now work together on the preparation of the information texts for the handout. Thus, it is not necessary to send many versions by email first, but a common version can be created in the etherpad. Afterwards, the results can be entered into a Word or PDF document for distribution.