Digital Documents

Documents can be created and shared online including text documents, slides, spreadsheets, surveys, diagrams, and websites. Online documents can be stored, versioned, commented on and updated collaboratively and shared with peers or just the instructor.

Examples in practice

  • USyd: Using Google docs for formative assessment, student feedback and collaboration in a language teaching unit. (coming soon)
  • Using Google docs in a university writing class for peer review, forms, polls, and other types of online collaboration.


Technologies

University Supported

  • LMS - The LMS can be used to create webpages that combine text, images, video and other assets. In Canvas, you can even give students permission to co-create these pages. [View tutorial for Canvas]
  • MS Office & Adobe Acrobat - Microsoft Office and Abobe Acrobat Pro are provided by the university. These can be used to edit and create PDFs and other documents which can be uploaded to the LMS.
  • Office 365 - Cloud-based access to the latest versions of Microsoft software (eg. Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint) from any browser (including mobile) in an integrated fashion designed to support collaboration within the organisation. Sign in with your university email address and unikey password: Sign in.
  • Sway - Create and share interactive reports, personal stories, or stand-alone presentations that seamlessly combine images, video and more. Available to staff as part of Office 365.

Unsupported

  • Google Docs - publicly available collaborative document creation and file storage. Create text docs, slides, spreadsheets and forms/polls. Make docs private or share with specific people (ie. students/staff/others). Can be useful for working with external collaborators (since uni-supported tech is only internal). Requires participants to have free Google accounts. (free)

NOTE: University Supported: supported by the University of Sydney helpdesk. FASS Supported: available to Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences staff. Unsupported: Used by academics but not supported by the university. More info on the About page.