NoodleTools for Students: Set Up a Collaboration

1. On the Dashboard screen, in the Sharing and Collaboration section, under Student Collaboration, to add a new collaborator to the project, click Add students.

2. Enter the student’s Personal ID in the text field. By default, the student will be a Full collaborator (equal access to edit the project as yourself). If you want the student be able to view your project and add comments, but not be able to add or change anything else, select the Peer-reviewer option.

If you need to add more than one collaborator, click Add More and enter the Personal IDs for each one. When you are done adding collaborators, click Done. Click to reload the Dashboard screen. You will now be able to see all collaborators' contributions to the project. 

3. If you have a Word online paper linked to the project to share, click Share paper in the Paper column. You may be prompted to log into your office 365 account and then the document will open. Return to the Dashboard screen and reload the page to verify the Paper column indicates that the document is shared with the collaborator. If the paper does not share successfully, make sure that the student you are trying to share with has their office 365 ID listed in their user profile.

When a collaborator is added successfully, you will see information including the student’s Personal ID, access type, and the time the paper was shared. The number of source references, notecards and comments added by each collaborator appears under the Contribution column.

A collaborative project shows up like any other project that you created on your Projects screen, but you will see a checkmark in the Collaborating? column.

Collaborative projects can be shared with a teacher’s project inbox just like any other project, so there can potentially be checkmarks in both the Shared? and Collaborating? columns. 
Note that only one of the students working on a collaborative project needs to share the project with a project inbox (as opposed to each collaborator individually).

As you work together on a collaborative project, your team members will use their NoodleTools accounts to contribute work or make changes to the project. When another student has the project open, you will see “Who's online” below the top navigation. Click on the link to view who is working on the project. If “Who's online” is not visible, it means that you are the only one currently viewing the project.

When a team member has saved a change (e.g., edited a notecard, deleted a source reference, updated the outline, etc.), other team members will get a green notification at the top of the screen reflecting what has changed.

Notecards — On the Notecards screen, when the green notification appears (see above image), the title of the modified notecard on the Tabletop will also blink.

As team members make changes to the project, your own screen will update to reflect those changes. On the Notecards screen, the changes on your screen will occur in real-time. For example, as a collaborator moves notecards around on the Tabletop, or into piles, you will see those same changes immediately on your Tabletop. 

Sources — On the Sources screen, like with notecards, a green notification at the top will alert you when a teammate made a change. To view their changes, reload the screen.

If you were not logged in when changes were made to the project, you can view updates in the Project history log. On the Dashboard screen, under Project and History, click “30-day log of work done on this project.” The Project history log shows the most recent activity at top. Scroll down to see what actions and changes took place earlier.

See the NoodleTools Help Desk tutorial “How to Write and Respond to Comments and Questions.”

If you are a collaborator on a project, selecting the project and deleting it from your Projects screen simply removes you as a collaborator. The project will still remain visible to your team members.

If you accidentally delete a collaborative project from your folder, you will need to ask one of your team members who still has access to re-add you as a collaborator to the project.