Tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.

Tag Archives: collaboration

Scheduling 101: The Ideal Academic App

February 11, 2010 in Productivity, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Today I'd like to brainstorm with ProfHacker readers about what the ideal academic scheduling service or app might look like. I've taken the various comments that ProfHacker readers have shared over the last few months and combined them with some ideas of my own. So consider this an open letter of sorts.

Scheduling 101: Using Tungle.me for Committee Meetings and Student Appointments

February 1, 2010 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Since using scheduling & calendaring services Doodle and Jiffle, I've learned about Tungle. Conclusion? It combines the best features of the other two and offers some features they don't, making it the best choice of the three for academics (though it's not without drawbacks). In this post I explain why.

GoogleDocs Now Accepts Any File Type

January 13, 2010 in Productivity by George H. Williams

Yesterday, the Official Google Blog announced that users can now upload any type of file to GoogleDocs, not just word processing files, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Call for Participation: Readers’ ProfHacker “Mixtapes”

December 4, 2009 in Life, Pedagogy, Productivity by George H. Williams

Let's talk about "mixtapes." We interrupt your regular ProfHacker programming to call for your participation in an end-of-semester idea by channeling Dana Carvey's grumpy old man for a moment.

ProfHacker 101: Getting started with Zotero, Part 2

November 20, 2009 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by Amy Cavender

Zotero's a great reference manager and writing tool. But it's also a great tool for collaboration, and it can automatically back up your library and notes for you. In this second part of ProfHacker's introduction to Zotero, I give a quick overview of Zotero groups and synchronization.

E-mail Is Not a Tool for Revision

November 19, 2009 in Productivity by Jason B. Jones

For 2010, let's break the habit of using e-mail to collaboratively edit documents.

Working with Creately—happy diagramming

November 19, 2009 in Products by Julie Meloni

Creately is an online diagramming application that is free, costs a little, or costs a little more depending on the collaboration and privacy features you would like. The application itself is full-featured at all levels, meaning you can forgo Microsoft Visio in favor of this wonderful tool that will meet many, if not all, of your basic diagramming needs.

Group Work 1.5: Simple Ways to Make Group Work More Meaningful

October 30, 2009 in Pedagogy by Jason B. Jones

For a long time, I was skeptical of group work as tangential to the common intellectual work of the class. I've gotten over that some, in part with a little technological help. Here are some simple ways to integrate the work of small groups into the class as a whole.

Writing in the Internet’s Margins

October 2, 2009 in Productivity by Brian Croxall

Over the last year, several academic manuscripts have been posted online to allow for commenting before the are ever sent to the press. ProfHacker takes a quick look at two of the tools--CommentPress and digress.it--that power such projects.

Scheduling: Using Doodle to find the best time for a committee meeting

September 24, 2009 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

This "ProfHacker 101" post explains how to use Doodle.com, a dead-simple and user-friendly service for scheduling meetings or surveying people. There are basically just three steps to take every time you use Doodle: create your poll; share the poll with other participants; check the poll after everyone has responded. In this post, we'll walk you through each of these steps.

Scheduling & Surveying 101: Introduction

September 17, 2009 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Whether you’re an instructor, a student, or a staff member, part of your responsibilities inevitably involve meeting with other people for collaborative work or discussion. And there aren’t many things more tedious or unnecessarily difficult than trying to find a meeting time that works for everyone. Fortunately, there are several possible solutions to the problem.

Using Google Documents when others need paper

September 4, 2009 in Pedagogy, Productivity by Amy Cavender
You’ve decided that you want to reduce the amount of paper in your course and that you want your students to develop collaborative and technical skills. So (perhaps after reading Julie’s recent post?) you’ve decided to use Google Documents. The ability to check the revision history will be especially handy given that you’re teaching a [...]