Office 365 provides a variety of free and intuitive co-authoring tools, which can be used alongside your current teaching. Co-authoring tools can be used as part of a suite of learning activities to engage your students in synchronous and asynchronous activities.
The following tools allow students to co-edit digital spaces in real-time, such as worksheets that have been pasted into the applications. This includes co-editing with annotation tools such as text, shapes and freehand annotation/drawing.
OneNote
OneNote is a flexible online workspace that can be used for individual or co-authoring during synchronous (classroom based or live online interaction) or asynchronous teaching (e.g. portfolios/wikis).
OneNote allows you to:
- Create blank pages for individual or group work on text-based exercises
- Share worksheets for individual or group markup using annotation tools
- Recorded authoring allows you to monitor individual contribution
OneNote can be set up as a single set of structured areas and pages, which can be shared with individuals or groups, or as a Class Notebook.
Class Notebook allows you to architecture a OneNote with different levels of access for individuals, group work, and instructor-only access, to be used for Portfolio-style working and to provide a consistent space for individual or group interaction.
Whiteboard
Whiteboard is a one-page online collaboration space which can be used in the browser via Office.com or in a limited version as an add-on to Teams meetings. Whiteboard works best for synchronous socially-distanced in-class or live online sessions and requires clear instructions and setting of boundaries.
Whiteboards automatically save to Office.com and can be accessed via the online Whiteboard app whilst they are being used, or after a meeting has finished.
Microsoft Whiteboard allows you to:
- Draw or add text in real time
- Add digital sticky notes
- Create a sharing link for collaboration
- Export the Whiteboard as an image
The online version provides greater functionality for collaborative working, including:
- Adding PDF, Word, or PowerPoint documents for annotation
- Smart drawing tools
- Progress lists with task-assigning features
- Changing the background to dots, squares, or graph “paper”
OneDrive
OneDrive is a file-storage and sharing facility that can be integrated with your local File Explorer, or accessed via Office.com. University members have access to 1TB of storage on OneDrive.
Saving a file to OneDrive allows you to share it with specific people, or anyone within the institution with the link, and give editing or viewing permissions.
OneDrive can be used for:
- Sharing worksheets
- Collaborating using PowerPoint online
- Collaboration on
- Synchronous or asynchronous activities
MS Teams
Teams is a collaborative working space that can be accessed via Office.com or downloaded as a desktop or mobile app.
Teams can be used for collaborative working and filesharing for your module and discrete group-work areas can be set up using Channels.