Collaborative tools (RUDAI Thing #12)

When I studied for my MA degree on Librarianship I had to work in groups with my co-students many times to carry out projects and finish coursework.

One of the collaborative tasks I can remember very well was on Open Access. The module was attended by the students of two different courses (Librarianship and Information Management). We were a group of seven people of both courses who would meet face to face during the hours we were at School and discuss how the project would develop, and what each one of us would do. But then we did not have courses every day or we attended modules on different days, and thus we were not all at School at the same time. Meeting virtually was a need we had to face and Google Drive was a useful tool to achieve these online meetings. It was a positive experience as it allowed me personally to expand my knowledge on virtual communication and learn tools such as Google Drive and Doodle.

So each one of us would write their own piece of the coursework, upload it on Google Drive and allow other group members to read it and edit it, if necessary to make it coherent with the rest of the coursework pieces. Then, we would use Doodle to arrange our face-to-face meetings at School.

I believe that if I was working in such a group again, an instant messaging tool, like Slack would be really useful. It would enable direct conversation and to ask/answer questions as sometimes we needed to converse on the project and we had to wait for our meetings at School to solve problems.

Collaborative tools are really so useful when work is divided among a number of people and I am glad I learned how to use at least a few of them.

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