Whether you’re working on a group project, need some homework help or are looking for a “study buddy,” there’s no question that collaborating with your classmates can be made easier with a little technology.  Below are the three tools that I found made my college coursework just a little bit easier.

Google Chat/Skype

You will almost certainly encounter at least one group project during the course of your college career.  But what if you can’t find a time for a face-to-face meeting with every group member?  Enter Google Chat, Skype or other instant messaging systems.  Coordinate a time to conduct a group chat, either text- or video-based, and meet up for as little or as much time as you need to divide tasks, compare notes and discuss next steps.

And Google Chat and Skype aren’t convenient for group projects alone.  They also make it easy to ask a friend a question about your notes or compare homework answers.

Facebook groups

Everyone knows that Facebook can be used to find new friends and keep in touch with old ones, but few people think of using Facebook as a study tool.  However, if you create a group for your class, all the students in your lecture can join and discuss the course on the wall or in the message strings.  Use the group to find study buddies, discuss homework, or ask a question about that line in your notes that you can’t quite decipher.  

Google Docs

This is my number one collaboration tool. All you need is a free Google account, and you can share files with your classmates and group members. Sure, you could email versions of your group paper or presentation back and forth, but Google Docs makes it possible for group members to make and see changes in real-time.  Additionally, you can add notes and comments in the margins of each document and chat within the document when other group members are online. With options for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings and files, Google Docs is ideal for any group project.  

Have you used any of these collaboration tools in your coursework?  Am I missing one of your favorite or best collaboration tools?