7 tech tools to improve student collaboration
Each student has their own hobbies, points of view, and motivation which ultimately means that every student has their own goals and that most students separate after the graduation to do their own thing. However, while in school, you will often find that studying within a group has its benefits.
Not only is it more fun, it can also often make studying simpler for you, help you to share your knowledge (as well as learn other people’s knowledge), and it also gives you useful communication and collaboration skills for almost any job. When solving problems with your partners, you learn the art of teamwork. For students who show leadership in their teams, it also helps to become good managers and leaders.
For better collaboration, it is recommended to use special websites like https://essaywritingsolutions.co.uk/ and other appropriate tools. They help to make your teamwork easier, work with other students remotely, and improve your communication during the process. Here you can learn about a few helpful tools that are used for such a purpose.
Best student collaboration tools
Google Docs
Google has completely changed team collaboration as we know it with the introduction of Google Docs. Now you don’t need to send a document to your partner, wait until they revise it, get it back and continue working on it. Everyone is able to edit the same documents and you can see what is added by each of your partners.
Google Docs tools are also useful for saving data in the cloud automatically. As long as you have the password to your account, you can’t lose your documents and have access to them from different devices, and the times when we could lose the file with the USB stick on which it was written, are gone.
Except for traditional office tools, there are also other instruments for students. Google Hangouts is useful for small discussions, Google Slides help you to create presentations, and Google Drawings will help undergraduates who need to build diagrams.
Padlet
Padlet is a tool is designed for collaborative discussions. If all the members of the team can’t be in one room, they can discuss any issue online by using this website. Anyone can register on this website, invite their friends, and add any types of information to their space, including photos, images and videos, music and other files.
Students like this platform because it is simple, there is no need to read instructions before using this website. It also gives you the necessary privacy if you want to share your knowledge only with a few people who are your class mates. It is like your personal corner on the internet, where you can collect all the key information you need for studying.
Students can use it for sharing their knowledge with others, discussing different issues, and collecting information from dozens of sources. Teachers can also use it for making presentations.
Debate Graph
Debate Graph is the online platform that lets you visualize and share knowledge, and by using it, you can build networks and collaborate with different people. Students and teachers are using it across the world because of its simplicity.
It helps to build decision-making graphs and visualize the cases that are the subject of a debate. This platform is also simple to understand, you just click and hover elements to read more about them or add information to the graph.
Students don’t even need to register to view charts. They can search by any keywords to find the elements with a specific issue, argument, field, etc. If you log in to this system, you can create your own elements and also rate the maps you use in your studying.
TalkBoard
It is not always easy to express your thoughts in words. There are many students who work well with text, so they prefer this type of presenting the information. But there are also many students who don’t like textual data and use to work with images, pictures, and graphs. These people can use TalkBoard as a fast and effective visualization tool.
When using this online platform, you don’t write what you think but draw it. It can be even quicker than writing if your drawing skills are much better than writing abilities. There you will find many tools for drawing that is no more difficult than in other image editors.
This tool is useful not only for students who like to draw, it would also be helpful to people who have autism or language disorder. If you came from another county and still haven’t learned the language fluently, you can also use this platform to express your thoughts.
Twiddla
When people collaborate in projects, they usually have a whiteboard for discussions. It helps them visualize their thoughts, make plans for different periods of time, and keep their knowledge in place. Twiddla is the digital version of the traditional analog whiteboard.
You can place any information on such a whiteboard, write on it, draw, and add notes for others. Share your whiteboard with your teammates and each of them will be able to see it and make their revisions, it helps people to collaborate even if they are far away from their university rooms.
In fact, it is even more useful than traditional whiteboards because you aren’t only limited to writing or draw on it but can also add pictures and other types of information. That is why this tool is recommended for teams who need to visualize the process of their collaboration.
TodaysMeet
This is a tool for creating chatrooms for students and teachers. By using TodaysMeet, teachers can share their knowledge and answer any questions from students. It makes studying easier and helps people study different subjects remotely if they don’t have the possibility to attend lessons.
While some may say this can be solved by messengers and social networks, it’s important to remember that those platforms are often not private. Information that the teacher publishes in their personal thread is private and shared only with students. It is like the small personal chat that works even for people who don’t like social networks.
This tool also helps teachers to continue helping students even after lessons. If any of them didn’t learn something or have questions about it, the teacher can provide answers quickly, wherever they are. This tool is very useful for collaboration between students and teachers.
Update: We recently learned that TodaysMeet has shut down. If you’re looking for an alternative to it, check out this post at FreeTech4Teachers.
Wikispaces Classroom
This platform helps you to build a private online place for discussions. It provides you with a safe and private network where you can edit pages with your teammates, say what you think, and collaborate on group projects with other people. There are also many ready templates that you can use for building your networks.
It also lets to watch the progress of any students, the teacher or a leader of the group can track the progress as well as react and give feedback in realtime if they think that students should do something in another way.
Update: We recently learned that Wikispaces is shutting down completely early next year.