In the last few years, the way people work has drastically changed. More and more people are working at home and finding new ways to collaborate on assignments. One of these new habits is the sharing of notes from class in a special format called PDF or computer file. Sharing your notes online allows you to receive feedback from fellow students while you’re still taking notes but also gives you an opportunity to revise your own work. Here are ways on how online notes sharing is revolutionizing the way we study and work together:

The Sharing Format

Before the use of PDF or computer file as the standard format in sharing notes, students used to share their notes by taking down notes from the class with a pen and then copying it to another sheet of paper. It was a time-consuming and inefficient process that usually left out some parts of the original material because there is no way to keep track of your own changes.

The Expansion of Notes in PDFs

Most of the students today use the first method to share their notes because they are familiar with it. However, with the number of people sharing notes online increasing, there is demand for notes to be shared in a more mass-produced format. The fact that notes can be made into PDFs and even shared immediately makes this method more practical for many students.

Rewriting Process Based on Comments from Others

The ability to revise a work based on comments from others makes learning more effective. In the traditional method of sharing notes, there is no way to track how many changes and revisions one has made so there is no way to tell whether it has been improved or not.

Recommendations on How to Collect Feedback

Students need to adhere these rules when collecting feedback from other students:

• Students need to collect as much feedback as possible. You can do this by opening a shared folder and asking other students to leave you constructive criticism on your work.
• After you’ve added changes to your work based on other students’ feedback, it’s important that you share it again. This way, more people can give more feedback. By going through this process several times, you will get the most productive feedback possible.
• Always keep track of what comments and suggestions have been implemented to avoid repeating yourself or wasting time on comments that have already been adjusted in your original work.