The sudden closing of schools and universities calls for extra efforts from all people involved with teaching. We face the challenge of juggling the build up of required infrastructure online along with trying to maintain a somewhat structured curriculum for our pupils and students. This task can be daunting, especially for persons with less experience with online collaboration tools.
Here I present a list of tools and infrastructure which hopefully help in this transition to remote teaching.
Overview:
- Forums / Discussion Boards
- Voice and Video Chats
- Online Conferencing
- Online Collaboration and Group Organisation
- Online Collaboration on Documents
- Cloud Storage
- Learn Management Systems (LMS)
My personal recommendations (or step by step guide for a successful transition)*:
- Sign up for a free Slack account. Set up Slack with useful channels (e.g. channels for individual classes or projects). You can make private channels on an invite only basis. Invite your team or reaserch group or other teachers which need to communicate and collaborate. Try to get all involved people to start communicating over Slack so everyone has the same information.
- If you only have small groups of people to teach (up to 3 pupils/students) get a free WhereBy account and set up a room. If you have bigger classes which are under 40 minutes get a free Zoom account. If you have larger classes which are longer than 40 minutes, get a paid Zoom subscription for around 15$/m.
- Get a paid Sync.com subsciption for around 5$/m. This lets you store files in a secure cloud (privacy regulations) and you can easily use Sync to request files from your students such as homework (https://www.sync.com/help/requesting-files-with-upload-enabled-links/)
- Set up a space for students such as Discourse where students can ask questions and answer each others questions or chat with each other and so on.
=> If you are feeling courageous and very nerdy you can set up Ilias which will basically give you functionalities of points 3 and 4 and much more such as online exams and all the nice teaching things. Be warned though, setting up a LMS can take quite a bit of time and nerves!
*Ratings and are my personal opinion or the opinion of multiple people I have spoken with
Discourse
Info: Discourse is a powerful modern conversation tool. Its like a traditional forum with topics/threads but also has more conversational capabilities such as timeline. It can be customised in detail and offers an advanced permisison system as well as an automatic point system.
Issues: Can take time to set up. Recommended to also have a Domain name.
- Suitability: High
- Cost: 100$/Month (5 Admins); 85% Discount for educational purposes. 3 Month free for educational institues affected by COVID19
- Link: https://www.discourse.org/
Skype
Info: Well known video/voice chat software by microsoft. Easy to use and preinstalled on some computers.
Issues: We had quality and latency issues so we decided to move to other tools.
- Suitability: Medium
- Cost: -
- Link: https://www.skype.com/en/
Discord
Info: This is the go-to voice/video chat service for gamers. Discord is easy to use, can be used with desktop app or online, you can make specific discussion groups. Since gamers are fussy about latency and quality, this app has boasted good quality.
Issues: None up to now
- Suitability: High
- Cost: free; 10$/month (mostly quality of life improvements)
- Link: https://discordapp.com/
Zoom
Info: Zoom is an intuitive and easy to use online conferencing program with integration with various tools such as Slack. Zoom has worked without problems from single meetings to PhD concept talks with over 85 participants!
Issues: None up to now
- Suitability: Very High
- Cost: Free (<40min grp meetings); 15$/month/moderator
- Link: https://zoom.us/
Whereby
Info: Whereby is an online browser based group video chat. This tool is intuitive and you can set up video rooms with links that are permenant so good for meetings with a limited number of people where you have to send a link in advance.
Issues: Some students had difficulties accessing this tool or the Camera or Mic did not work with this tool
- Suitability: High
- Cost: Free (1 room; <5 participants); 10$/month (3 rooms; <13 participants)
- Link: https://whereby.com/
Slack
Info: After trying various tools, we opted for Slack. Slack is an online organisation and chatting tool where you can make different channels for different topics and users can subscribe to specific channels. You can make private channels and invite specific people for projects concerning only a subset of a group. You also have direct messaging and integration of a lot of tools.
Issues:
- Suitability: Very High
- Cost: Free (10k post history; single video chat); 6$/month (unlimited post history; group video chat)
- Link: https://app.slack.com/
Mattermost
Info: This tool has come up a couple of times but I have no experience
Issues: -
- Suitability: -
- Cost: -
- Link: https://mattermost.com/
Keybase
Info: Encrypted messaging and file sharing for everyone with privacy concerns. Based on Blockchain technology.
Issues: Have not personally tested this
- Suitability: Medium / High
- Cost: free
- Link: https://keybase.io/
Microsoft Teams
Info: Microsoft Teams is another collaboration tools including a bunch of features similar to Slack and Mattermost such as chats, calls etc. This tool is being used in some research groups.
Issues: Laggy during the first few days of transition to online teaching. Apparently stable now.
- Suitability: High?
- Cost: Not sure (some educational institutes might have licences for corporate tier)
- Link: https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software
Overleaf
Info: Latex co-working platform. Very powerful and many features. Very good for collaborating on writing.
Issues: Complicated to get used to without latex experience
- Suitability: High
- Cost: Free; 15$/month
- Link: https://www.overleaf.com/
Google Docs
Info: Documents saved in google drive. Can be shared and worked on at the same time.
Issues: Needs good internet connection
- Suitability: Medium/High
- Cost: Free
- Link: https://docs.google.com/
Office Onedrive
Info: Offices documents saved on onedrive can be opened in browser office and multiple people can work on docs.
Issues: Some sync issues
- Suitability: Medium
- Cost: ?
- Link: https://products.office.com/en-us/onedrive/online-cloud-storage
Sync
Info: Very good, stable and secure cloud storage. Encrypts documents to ensure privacy regulations!
Issues: Since documents are encrypted on server, not always possible to open in browser
- Suitability: Very High
- Cost: -
- Link: https://www.sync.com/
Dropbox
Info: Widely used cloud service with state of the art syncing
Issues: Some vulnerabilities
- Suitability: High
- Cost: -
- Link:https://www.dropbox.com/
Google Drive
Info: Googles cloud storage which integrates very well with other google services (e.g. google docs; gmail).
Issues: Privacy can be an issue...
- Suitability: High
- Cost: -
- Link: https://www.google.com/drive/
OneDrive
Info: Microsoft cloud which is included in some Office products. Very good online browser based editing of office files.
Issues: Sometimes syncing is very slow
- Suitability: High
- Cost: -
- Link: https://onedrive.live.com/about/de-de/
Mega
Info: No experience but apparently strong focus on privacy
Issues: ?
- Suitability: ?
- Cost: -
- Link: https://mega.nz/
Ilias
Info: State of the art open source LMS used by many universities with a huge variety of features!
Issues: Very powerful LMS and therefore not at all trivial to set up. Probably need help from webdesigner/IT to set up and a few days to get used to if you have some IT skills. Once set up very intuitive LMS with a plethora of features handy for teaching! Server needed.
- Suitability: Very High
- Cost: Free (needs server)
- Link: https://www.ilias.de/
Moodle
Info: Very similar to Ilias. Also state of the art open source LMS used by many universities with a huge variety of features! Somewhat more known, but also a bit less intuitive than Ilias.
Issues: Quite powerful LMS and therefore not trivial to set up. IT personel or someone with webdesign knowledge might be needed. Server needed.
- Suitability: High
- Cost: Free (needs server)
- Link: https://www.ilias.de/
On School
Info: Swiss Moodle LMS provider. Offering free services during Corona. Have not tested this but this was recommended to me.
Issues: No experience to date
- Suitability: -
- Cost: -
- Link: https://www.onschool.ch/de/