MicroMasters® at the University of Edinburgh

An introduction to the resources available to support your learning

Introduction

roads at nightWorking together with other learners is something you might be asked to do as part of your course. There may be collaborative tools built into your online learning space, or you might want to use other tools. Here are some ideas.

Tools for collaboration

If you're working with others on an assignment, then you might need to find ways of sharing materials with one another seamlessly, and without the need to be emailing back and forth constantly.

Everything listed on this page can be used collaboratively - to write together, to annotate PDFs together, or to share resources.

However, please bear in mind that plagiarism can arise from colluding with others, so be careful in sharing materials other than for specific group work or projects.

For collaborative writing tools, you might consider Google Drive, Dropbox Paper, Authorea and Overleaf, among many others. While selecting one is a matter of pure preference, you may wish to bear in mind that Overleaf works better with LaTex than the others.

For storing files or other materials in a collaborative way, Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote will all allow you to share materials and work together on them effectively.

For sharing resources or references with one another, most reference managers will work: Endnote, Zotero and Mendeley all have group options; FoxIt and GoodReaders allow you to annotate PDFs and then share them.