Learn Hack #4 Write collaborative document by ScHARR Library

Collaborative tools such as Google Docs have been around for years and are a brilliant way for students in different parts of the world to work on the same piece of work. They are a great way for students to collaborate as opposed to collude which is something that is frowned upon within academic study. They remove the long standing problem of multiple versions and email attachments which often just lead to confusion and anxiety over which version is the latest. One of the biggest problems have had is how they store and access their work, all too often they keep their precious essays and documents on a portable USB drive. Whilst this might seem a good idea, the problem is that if you lose that drive, you lose all of your work. This happens on an awful lots of occasions, and it’s been known for students to lose whole dissertations or an essay which is still bad enough. Although the referencing aspect of Google Docs is still at an early stage, it is still a great way to start a rough draft of a single or collaborative piece of work, whether it be a book, journal or proposal. Collaborators can see the article being written in real time and can see who has contributed which part via the revision history tool. In addition collaborators can track changes and comment on others input into the paper. The Doc is constantly saved automatically, so even if your computer crashes your document will still be saved there on the web. Most importantly you can access the paper anywhere with an internet connection and you can also save documents offline on your own laptop or computer. Finally, any documents you create can be exported in multiple formats, including word and PDF. Google Docs is an incredibly useful tool and well worth investigation.