“New technology cannot be deemed as the sole solution to all educational challenges.”
In recent years, Dropbox has gained massive traffic in the education sector. It has become an invaluable tool for researchers, educators and students for its multitude of functions in sharing and storing files. It helps users to compartmentalise, customise, and accomplish various tasks through a streamlined chain of digital communication.
Due to the global pandemic, most students are required to study remotely. From classes to final exams, their entire learning process has been shifted online. It is essential for them to utilise the most effective digital resources that will help them navigate through various learning curves.
Technology in Learning
The continuous progression of digital learning has solved many modern-day challenges. Therefore, new technology is often associated as a “quick fix” to numerous classroom issues. Most educators are under the impression that the purchase of the most up-to-date technology is the antidote to all classroom problems. New technology cannot be deemed as the sole solution to all educational challenges. It has proven to only be effective when the right teaching methodologies and approaches are utilised strategically.
An educator must be receptive to the needs of students whereby their agency and motivation for learning is supported and engaged through the right teaching methods. Once that is established, digital tools can be used to enhance the quality of the education provided.
Universities that are using Dropbox to eliminate common classroom challenges
- California State University, Fullerton (CSUF)
The staff and members within the university have used Dropbox Education to distribute course materials to students, receive assignments for markings from students, craft academic policies and conduct lectures. Students within the faculty have used Dropbox to submit assignments and work on class projects with their peers.
- The University of Manchester (UOM)
The university has employed Dropbox Business as a part of its Cyber Security Programme and utilised its collaborative features to enable smooth communication between its students, staff and global partners, as well as to conduct in-depth research.
- The University of Sydney (UOS)
The university has been recognised to use Dropbox Education to increase the speed and quality of research and academic collaborations. This has proven to successfully reduce the fragmentation and error in data storages, as well as seamlessly connecting staff to students.
What are the features and benefits available in Dropbox Education?
Safeguard institutional data
Dropbox Education offers administrative tools to easily monitor activities and control the sharing of all documents. It comes with a multi-layered protection scheme to ensure sensitive research IP and institutional data are kept secure through the integration of Active Directory, Cloudlock, Shibboleth, InCommon and Okta. To supplement their GDPR compliance efforts, Dropbox also adheres to the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Code of Conduct for GDPR Compliance. In other words, Dropbox doesn’t play when it comes to privacy and security.
Enable seamless academic research collaborations
The file-sharing and cross-device sync functions allow documents to be uploaded and shared with no size limitations, and it allows research teams to work together in real-time.
Boost overall productivity
Dropbox Education can be easily integrated with the best virtual learning equipment and management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle, as well as popular communication tools like Slack and Zoom.
Connect on an international scale
It allows collaborations between different cities and countries. This means researchers from all corners of the world can come together to exchange ideas and share new findings while educators can connect with students who are not residing in the same area as them.
Simplify grant writing
Dropbox Education makes it easy for grant writers and contributors to get their hands on the most up-to-date file versions, track access, and gather comments from reviewers.
Shared storage space and longer version history
There is 15GB of storage available to each user in the entire team. This means a team of 300 users would have 4.5TB of total available space. In addition, Dropbox Education team members have 120 days to recover deleted and previous versions of files. This gives both educators and students the chance to recover any loss materials.
Streamline professional research workflow
Users can take and share class notes through Dropbox Paper, a collaborative workspace that aids the process of curating and sharing ideas. Users can create folders to collect timestamps for assignment materials, compile assignment data in Excel, or perform analyses in MATLAB or Stata. It also serves as a great way to generate final reports. Users can directly edit drafts, convert them to LaTeX, and send them to professors who can review, grade, and distribute the final edited version with researchers via a shared folder.
Dropbox Education brings an array of brilliant features and functions that are paving the way to better digital learning and teaching experiences. If you are interested to learn more or would like to get started with Dropbox Education today, get in touch with us now!
