|  | | Tools for Online Collaboration
More and more, University faculty and staff are working across state, regional, and national boundaries, collaborating with scholars and educators in all parts of the world. Here are some tools to make that collaboration easier and less expensive.
Tools for collaboration, from the simplest to the most versatile
Share files with NetFiles
Within the University community, the Active Directory shares are the most convenient place for workgroup collaboration, but when we need to share files outside of the U, NetFiles provides an easy solution. Within the 5G of space provided in your NetFiles account, you can create folders accessible with a browser. You can send a link to a colleague anywhere in the world with read-only or read-write access and have it expire (or not) on your schedule. You can even create a website using the "www" folder.
Share bookmarks with Delicious
Delicious is an online "social bookmarking" application that allows you to collect websites relevant to your project online and share them with your colleagues anywhere in the world. Delicious includes a tagging system that helps you search for your saved sites by keyword for easy retrieval. Here is a YouTube video that illustrates clearly how this works.
Create/edit documents collaboratively with a Wiki
The University wiki provides everything you need to work on documents as a group, including the ability to compare new revisions with previous ones, and to easily track who made which edits. Users without a University Internet I.D. can sign up for a free guest account, provided they have a sponsor at the U.
Google Apps
Beginning fall 2009, the University plans to offer Google Mail and Apps as an option to faculty, staff, and students. In the meantime, the public version of Google Apps, including the Google Documents collaboration tool, are available free at any time for use with documents that do not require a high level of security.
MyU Portal
MyU Portal provides individual work spaces for everyone at the University, but can also be used to create sites for collaborative projects. MyU Portal provides a suite of features for collaborative work, including:
- Discussion tool
- File library and recommended links
- Area for working with documents, including version control
- Calendar of events
- Member list with contact information
- Meeting notes, agendas, and presentation files
- Polls
As with the wiki, users outside the University must apply for a free guest account and provide the Internet ID of their U sponsor.
Getting started with MyU Portal:
- To get an e-mail account for your University project, apply to the Accounts office.
- Read the steps for creating a collaborative website laid out in the collaboration website administrator guide (PDF).
- Read tips for users in the MyU Portal collaboration quick reference guide (PDF).
Moodle - everything but the kitchen sink!
Moodle focuses on course delivery, but is also an amazingly comprehensive tool for collaborative work. In addition to a calendar, document management, polling and threaded discussions, Moodle incorporates University tools such as blogging, NetFiles, wiki, chat, and the group's e-mail account, along with many other features, into an easy-to-use website. To get an idea of how many ways Moodle can be used to facilitate your collaboration, read the Moodle support page.
As with the wiki and MyU Portal, collaborators from outside the University may apply for a free guest ID.
Video conferencing
Many video conferencing options are available in CFANS. Read about them here.
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