What are you using to share files with students?

[Brian Ford]

O.K. CompTIA Instructors. What tools are you using to share materials with your students? Materials could be text files to PDFs to videos.

Google Drive?
DropBox?
Box?
Website?
Other...

I've used Google Drive, DropBox, and websites. All of their pros and cons. I'm looking for opinions and ideas.
I'm hoping that you are all enjoying your summer! Thanks in advance.
Brian

 

[Lee McWhorter]

We currently use Slack for student comms and file sharing, etc. Over time I have used all of the above from your list, and you are right that they all have their pros and cons Hope you are having a great Summer too!

Lee

 

[Carlos Miranda]

I go with the resources the org has in place. MS Teams seems to be growing as a robust tool.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

My students are all from the same school, which uses MS Teams internally. Every class/group has its own channel, which makes it a great way to keep contact and to teach class online. Everything's in one place.

All slides and PDFs go onto the class' MS Teams channel, ditto for my lab assignments and scripts.

I am also starting up a public / free version of my class. The videos go on YouTube, the lab assignments and files are on Github. It's all very sparse so far, but I do like the distribution tools. YouTube is a solid platform and Github is awesome.

• https://github.com/unixerius/XK0-004
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO0BqJvRbF9h75PoQOmENnw

 

[Rick Butler]

Historically, we've used Google Drive for this, but as we're transitioning to MSFT, we'll also be making use of Teams/OneDrive/Exchange/SPS at some point. Our course specific materials like syllabi and such are on Canvas, with links built in so the students don't have to hunt for the things they need.

Students have also done their own sharing using Discord, previously, although I'm not sure if they still are.

/r

 

[Brian Ford]

We currently use Slack for student comms and file sharing, etc. Over time I have used all of the above from your list, and you are right that they all have their pros and cons Hope you are having a great Summer too!

Lee

Regarding Carlos and Tess comments about MS Teams... I've taught recently at a university that uses Teams (this past academic year) and the feedback from faculty and students was that the Team space had to be setup and was unavailable on the first day of classes in the Fall (likely a Teams start up problem at that school) and that the Team space evaporated right after the end of the semester. This was a Cisco Academy that delivers CCNA over 3-4 semesters and that didn't go over well. Again, probably a local admin or license issue.

 

[Fanuel]

I use google drive

 

[Tess Sluijter]

[...] the feedback from faculty and students was that the Team space had to be setup and was unavailable on the first day of classes in the Fall [...] and that the Team space evaporated right after the end of the semester. [...] Again, probably a local admin or license issue.

Yeah, you're right it most likely is about restricted amounts of licenses, plus delays in system admin processes. That's a hassle.

 

[jasoneckert]

We use MS Teams for class-related stuff because all staff and students have college-provided M365 accounts.
So, we naturally use that for file sharing since each Team sets up file sharing via SharePoint, and it's unlimited.
A nice bonus is that each student has a 1TB OneDrive, and can instead click a link in the Files section of Teams to instantly copy these shared files to their OneDrive instead of downloading them (they can then download them from their OneDrive later, if they choose).

 

[Patrick Asamago]

I use Google Drive and some time WeTransfer for extremely large files.

 

[randy wild]

O.K. CompTIA Instructors. What tools are you using to share materials with your students? Materials could be text files to PDFs to videos.

Google Drive?
DropBox?
Box?
Website?
Other...

I've used Google Drive, DropBox, and websites. All of their pros and cons. I'm looking for opinions and ideas.
I'm hoping that you are all enjoying your summer! Thanks in advance.
Brian

I use Dropbox for powerpoint slides and videos. Sometime the font is small, so I recommend they download the materials to their PC. Since the URL is long, and some students forget the link (I told them to bookmark it), I use TINY.URL to convert the long link to a shorter one.

 

[WillieJoe3]

I've found Moodle to be a good tool to consolidate everything. Teams works well also

 

[Brian Ford]

Thanks for all the great feedback. My take aways...

It seems like many are moving to MS Teams. My experience with Teams was meh... Due to the roll out of the product I didn't have access until after the start of classes. Big problem. Again because it was new to the school students were not familiar with it and I couldn't spend class time supporting the tool. Add to this that since the product was new at this school support for students seemed to become overwhelmed. As a licensed product (and again new at this school) I was (and many students were greatly) disappointed when our Team space went away almost immediately after the end of the first course. This was attributed to license management.

I shared this feedback with the school were I work. The next semester was better for everyone. Students in the IT program are certainly much more aware of the importance of backups.

1. As an instructor my advice is to stage all of your materials on a platform that you have your own control over.
2. Relying on Teams for assignments and student submissions turns every course offering into a hybrid course.
3. Make sure that you have backups of all of your teaching materials on media you control.
4. Backup your Team rooms conversations weekly to your own storage (I used a USB key & Google Drive).
5. Expect more student email and students attending office hours.
6. Recognize that if students have issues they are sometimes going to reach out (and others will just seem to not show up). Have info ready for students about who they should contact in IT support.
7. As I learned in the early days of teaching over Webex; as an instructor be very pro active about reaching out to all students early to make sure that they can connect. Don't assume that because they are taking an IT course they have much knowledge of IT and Teams.