Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

142 Studying online 
permissions, and so on is an excellent early task in your collabo-
ration. Otherwise, you will be part-way through the group work, 
and some people won’t know where to fnd things or even be able 
to access them. You ought to also establish responsibilities. For 
instance, are you all going to proofread the document, or will that 
be delegated to one team member? Working out who does what 
at the outset will save items being missed later, thereby reducing 
marks if it is an assignment. For online students, all of this is much 
more important than for students on campus. Online you will not 
bump into fellow students, which campus students will do. Tat 
means if they have forgotten something for their group work, they 
can remind a colleague as they pass in the corridor between lec-
tures. As an online student, you will not have that opportunity, so 
being organised from the outset for collaborative work is essential. 
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PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS 
Tere is a wide variety of project management software and apps 
you can use online to help with collaborative work. Tese can be 
used to help ensure everyone is on track and that each element of 
the work has been done on time. However, for many straightfor-
ward group assignments, such systems can be more trouble than 
they are worth. You can spend hours administering the system 
instead of just getting on with your work. 
Tere are, though, some online tools that are straightforward 
and will help you see at a glance the progress of your group work. 
One particular style of an app which can achieve this uses what 
is known as the Kanban style. Kanban is a visual scheduling bill-
board that was developed in Japan for the car manufacturer Toy-
ota (Ohno, 1988). Tis is a rapid method of being able to see at 
what stage each element of the process is and what remaining 
work needs to be done. 
You start a Kanban board with all the items in the frst column, 
the To Do list. You can then have as many columns to the right as 

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