Using Your Google Drive

Your Google Drive Belongs to You

The Google Workspace for Education provides you with a number of valuable apps in addition to gmail (for your email account). Most significantly for WISR students, you have your own drive--that you can use to store and access files (from the "cloud")--including documents (Google Docs) as well as photos, videos and other types of files. [For more information, go to: https://www.google.com/intl/en_in/drive/ ].  For students, the Google Drive is essential for storing, accessing and sharing your WISR written assignments, and it can also be valuable for other, personal uses. For faculty, it should be used for storing and sharing written assignments submitted by your students, and for sharing other documents relevant to your work as a faculty person, or for WISR staff, documents relevant to your duties as a staff person. 

Using Your Google Drive for Storing and Submitting Your Academic Work

Students:

For Courses in Progress: You should keep all of your in-progress drafts, as well as revised drafts based on faculty feedback, in a Folder on your Google Drive, and if you wish, in a folder on your computer as well [recommended name of folders and files: yourfirstname_lastname_coursenumber_workingfile].  “Working file” designates that the course is in progress, or perhaps contains material generated during the course that isn’t a formal requirement (e.g., journals or notes you've kept, flyers used, letters and comments from coworkers or faculty, photos taken, web pages that are relevant, etc.), but that you may wish to access and use after completing the course.  [Example of folder name: jane_smith_MFT 551_working; example of file names: jane_smith_MFT 551_module1, or jane_smith_MFT 551_annbib ]. It is very important to keep your drafts in the Google Drive--in the past, some students have lost many pages of valuable writing when there computer has crashed, and they had failed to back up their work. The files in the Google Drive can be accessed from any computer (table or phone) by logging into your wisr.edu email!!

Once a document is finalized it should be put in a folder in your Google Drive, and if you wish, on your computer as well [recommended folder name: yourfirstname_lastname_coursenumber_final].

This final folder should contain a number of things; for most courses: the assignments for each of the modules, your log of collaboration, your end of course self-assessment, annotated bibliography, assessment of your learning in relation to course and degree program outcomes, the term paper for the course (if applicable), and form approving that your action-research lab proposal has been reviewed according to WISR’s IRB—ethics in research criteria. Optionally, you may wish to keep a copy of your online posts and replies in your Google Drive as well. (The form you fill out online to evaluate the course once you complete it and to estimate the time you spent in course activities is submitted separately and directly to WISR’s administrative officer, not as part of this folder.)

Once you have completed a final version of all required documents (after your faculty advisor has reviewed the drafts and you have made the needed revisions) for the course, then give your supervising faculty member EDITING/OWNERSHIP access to this folder in your Google Drive (or, in the short-run, while you are still becoming proficient in using Google Drive, you may submit all the documents in ONE email to the faculty member for their review.  HOWEVER, AFTER A SHORT TRANSITION PERIOD, WE WILL ONLY ACCEPT FILES SUBMIT BY PROVIDING ACCESS TO YOUR GOOGLE DRIVE!)

You should also request that the faculty member supervising and approving your work for this course give you a copy of their Evaluation of your performance, so you can keep this in your Google Drive as well, along with your own copy of your final, written assignments. 

Faculty:

After you review the student’s submission of ALL paperwork needed to address course requirements, you will either: 1) return any documents in need of further revision to the student and/or inform them of missing documents (in which case they will re-submit to you after having addressed your concerns), or once completed with no needed further revisions or additions, 2) make a copy of their final, submitted work in a folder in your Google Drive AND ADD TO THE FOLDER YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE STUDENT'S PERFORMANCE (on the official form for this purpose). 

Be sure to remove from documents being submitted any comments you made to the student, so that the final, official folder contains only "clean copies" of the student's final, submitted assignments. 

Then, you will provide WISR Administration (the President/CEO or the Chief Academic Officer) with EDITING/OWNERSHIP access to the folder in your Google Drive that also contains your Evaluation of Student Performance and all the documents submitted by the student.  WISR administration will lock their copy of the final and archive it as part of the Student’s Official Learning Portfolio of completed academic work. WISR keeps these documents in the official Administrative Drive (electronically), as well as a hard copy in a locked, fireproof cabinet at WISR.  

Using the Google Drive to Share Work in Progress and to Collaborate

Many students and faculty find it convenient to share drafts with someone with whom they are collaborating, or requesting feedback, by sharing documents and folders within their Google Drive. Many people are familiar with how to do editing (and suggested edits) by sharing Google Docs, for example. WISR has tech support that can help you access instructions on how to do this, and many students and faculty help one another with this. Also, WISR typically offers a two-hour seminar once every three months to help you learn more about how to use the Google Workspace. 

The following instructional videos are just a start that may be helpful to you:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8B0HaLk0_s 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xapBM5iOnn4 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wF58sbzPU 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8km3eDKIUg 

Your Personal Uses of the Google Drive

You may freely use the Google Drive to store any other documents, photos or videos that are useful to you to store in the "cloud" through the services provided by Google to students in academic institutions using Google Workspace for Education. At this time, Google provides 5 TB of storage. Also, at this time, WISR allows alumni to keep and use their wisr.edu Google Account account (which includes email and Google Drive access, along with other Google apps), and if that option changes at a future date, we will inform graduating or withdrawing students that they must migrate the files in their Google Drive to another cloud service or a back up hard drive. If we must do this, we will give as much notice as possible, and we would expect that you will get at least two weeks' notice, in any case.