The annual tech survey is one of the most effective ways for you to voice your opinion. It gives us the most comprehensive look at how your technical experience has been. Based on the results, we know which projects to tackle in the coming year and can identify trends before they become problems. We’ve already given you a preview of some of the results of the annual tech survey and covered some of the improvements we made based on your feedback.
For me, the most interesting findings in the survey have related to the difficulty and frustration that comes with collaborating and sharing information for group projects. As I was reading the results and comments, my first thought was that students had to be missing something because I never had this much trouble doing group work. We met, broke up the parts of the project, then worked on them independently. We might have emailed about a few things, or peer edited here and there. At the end, we’d meet again and put everything together. One person (usually the most dominant personality), would be in charge of making sure it flowed, looked the same, and was nicely formatted. Then I realized that in the timeline of tech generations, I’m old. I never had Google Docs or Dropbox to help me do school work. I certainly couldn’t work from my smart phone because the iPhone hadn’t changed everyone’s lives yet. I didn’t have as many options and that made collaboration a lot easier.
Fall 2011 Tech Survey Results - Collaboration Tools
Now, there is an app or a service to do just about everything. You can edit a document in real time, access your work from any Internet connected device, share it to others with a click on your smart phone, and communicate with group members by phone, email, text message, instant message, social networking, or video chat. All of these tools can be a help with school work, but in the context of a group project, managing them can be as much work as the assignment itself. Moreover, choosing the right services can make or break your collaboration experience.
There is no single tool or service that does everything well (yet!). Google Docs is best for real-time multi-user word processing, but falls short on spread sheets and formatting. Dropbox makes it easy to share with your group, but version control can get out of hand quickly and it’s web-based when you’re not on your own computer or device. MyWhartonDrive is great for storing files, especially when you’ve been working in a GSR or lab, but sharing is by email only. What’s the best strategy, then? Do you use the best service for the specific task at hand, even if that means having more accounts, applications, and services to set up and manage? Or do you pick one and try to make it fit all your projects? What do you do if your group members don’t know how to use the same tools, or insist on using something else? Or do you skip all of the tools and try to manage a deluge of email? It seems like most people do a little bit of everything with varying levels of success.
This is where we need your help. We’ve done our best to document the complications and nuances of group work. We’ve compiled a list of commonly used tools and their strengths and weaknesses. We’ve also thought about the non-technical aspects of collaboration, such as file and folder naming, organization, and meetings. They are not technical concepts in their own right, but looking for the most up to date file or trying to schedule a meeting can waste a lot of the time that is supposed to be saved by using these tools and services.
So take a look at our articles on collaboration and let us know if we got it right. Tell us in the comments what has worked for you and what hasn’t. As business students, collaboration is unavoidable, so help us figure out what the best practices are so we can share them with your fellow classmates.
