How to Collaborate Online at Australian Universities

The tools you need to learn from a distance.

Whether you intend to study a university course online or you’ve been forced into it due to the global pandemic, it can be handy knowing what collaborative tools exist to help you succeed in your studies from afar.

So if you somehow need more excuses to stay in bed and watch your lectures, we’re here to help.

University tools

Even if you’re an internal student you will likely have access to various university-provided tools that make studying in 2020 a little more convenient.

Most universities will provide you with a study/class hub where you can access all the information on your classes, tutors, unit outlines and where you should find your assessment submission point. Not every Aussie uni is the same but a very popular service is Blackboard. What’s great about tools like this is that they often include a discussion board, forum section or a way that you can connect with other students in your classes. Here you should be able to discuss unit content, share group work and get feedback. So don’t snooze on Blackboard.

Your university’s library website is another severely underrated tool that you should definitely learn to navigate. Here you will be able to find all the online books, journals, articles, reviews, and dissertations you need for your assessments. Having access to resources that you can open and share with your classmates online will definitely speed up your learning process. No more trips to your local library are necessary.

Your best friend when it comes to studying online will be your university provided email. Not only will you get all the information needed for your units directly in your student inbox, but you can also use it to connect with others in your course.

Your student provided email address will likely have email addresses of all your tutors and professors pre-filled so if you need to contact them for an emergency question or extension, their email is often the best way to find them.

Here you will also get news about what is happening with clubs and your university guild to find out what you can get involved with from a distance.

Right here on the Student Edge website you can also find heaps of useful articles and advice on study and life, but a tool you should really try out are our forums. Here you can find a bunch of super interesting and helpful threads from other students all about education, life, jobs, hobbies and more. You can either join in on a forum, search or filter some preestablished threads or ask your own question. This is a great way to get advice and have your questions answered from other young people, and may even be a great way to make new friends and connect online.

Social Media

A great way to collaborate with classmates (and keep some accountable) is through the social media services that you already use.

Facebook is one of the most obvious options, but you may not be taking full advantage of all the ways that it can assist you in your studies.

Add your classmates as friends, start a group chat or even join a unit or course specific group. Not only will Facebook groups allow you to share study content and group work, but they can be a great hub for future students and an awesome way to make friends online.

If you or your groupmates don’t have Facebook, you can always start a group chat via services like WhatsApp. If you’ve never used it before, WhatsApp is a free cross-platform messaging service that you can also use to send images, video, voice recordings or to video chat or make a phone call.

This service is not only easy to use but it has end-to-end encryption, so you don’t need to worry about any of your work going missing, as it’s super secure.

Professional tools

There are also a bunch of professional tools that you can use to collaborate with your classmates and tutors which you may not be making full use of.

We’ve all heard of Zoom (especially after this year), and while it's great for your online classes, you may want to use something different for your group assignments.

Some other video calling services are Skype, Slack and Teams. All three are free chat, phone call and video conferencing tools so you have your pick of the bunch if you need to have an online meeting.

Sharing documents and presentations can get messy when all your groupmates are using different tools on different software. If you don’t want to have to go back and fix it all later, one of the best ways to collaborate with everyone in one place is to use Google Docs and Google Sheets.

Here you and all your groupmates can all access your combined assignment online via your Google account, making editing and finishing your assessment a lot faster.

If your studies require you to send or receive large files or videos to your classmates or tutors you need to take advantage of your Dropbox or iCloud account.

With these cloud tools, you can store your files online so that you can access them wherever you are. They’re also a lifesaver when you need to send a friend a file but neither of you has a USB drive.

Cloud services are great for collaboration and as an added bonus they can hold your work as a backup file, giving you piece of mind in case you forget or accidently lose your work.

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