Improving the traditional college experience for professors and students.
GUEST COLUMN| by Tunio Zafer
College days are supposed to be the best of our lives, but that doesn’t mean that they’re easy. Between classes, jobs, friends and extracurricular activities, college is a hectic whirlwind that can at times feel overwhelming. Students and professors alike look for way to simplify their busy schedules and workloads. For both, cloud storage could be the answer.
From public to private to community, cloud storage has the potential to markedly improve the traditional college experience. Below are just a few of the ways academia can utilize cloud storage’s conveniences and security features:
Professors
- Curriculum: Professors balance multiple courses a semester, with some hundred students enrolled each term. This workload is often unmanageable, but, by partnering with a cloud storage platform, professors would gain access to an exceptional system for digitally managing their curriculums. On the cloud, professors can organize class assignments, cache lesson plans and track teaching methods from year-to-year.
Cloud storage is also a unique medium for widespread collegiate collaboration. Professors can share and edit lesson plans, streamlining objectives within and across departments. Through this communal approach to education, a school’s staff could more easily strengthen their programs’ reputations and school’s academic prestige.
- Grading: Cloud storage is a great place for professors to conduct grading. The best cloud storage platforms have security measures to ensure that grades remain protected and unhackable. Client-side encryption options allow users to self-determine which files need to be most secure, and for professors, these could be answer keys or master lists of semester grades.
As an added component of grading, students often solicit their favorite professors for recommendation letters. Cloud storage would allow professors to organize and directly share letters with students, who could then utilize the digital documents to submit letters as necessary. Within this streamlined approach, recommendations would be transmitted more safely than over email, and encryption features would also ensure that students were prohibited from altering the content of their letters.
- Research: For many professors, research is a large component of academia. However, pages of writing and an accumulation of notes and edits plague strong research. Cloud storage could assist professors in the organization of this massive amount of data. Certain cloud storage providers even allow unlimited file size upload and offer unlimited cloud storage space to handle an influx of real-time research.
Students
- Group Projects: Students dread group projects. There’s always a slacker, there’s always a boss, and, no matter the amount of planning and organization, there’s always drama. Cloud storage providers can help students mitigate the stresses inherent to group work.
First, cloud storage providers can track and manage a project’s completion. Cloud storage platforms often sport notifications features (read, opened, edited, etc.) and commenting options that allow group members to observe inter-group progress. Second, cloud storage providers allow users to collaborate on shared files at the same time. And third, with files stored directly on the cloud instead of on users’ hard drives, students can access files from any cloud-compatible device. This enables groups to meet and work digitally and better negotiate differences in class schedules or living situations.
- Schoolwork: Cloud storage is perfect for individual work. Student can use their cloud storage platform to house lecture notes, essays and assignments. As an added bonus of cloud storage, students can also feel less concerned about losing their work. In worst-case scenarios—a coffee spilled across a keyboard or a computer stolen during a bathroom break—users can always retrieve information that is stored on the cloud.
- Personal Files: When it comes to college, many experiences happen outside of the classroom. Cloud storage is a great way for students to better manage job or grad school applications, student loan documents and files for extracurricular activities. Because such information is more sensitive than most, users can increase protection through encryption. With user-determined encryption keys and zero-knowledge guarantees, students can ensure that no one else can access their most private information.
Around campus, cloud storage has the power to dramatically influence how users interact with their education. Cloud storage serves as a repository of resources for a school’s unique needs, and students and staff can equally benefit from the industry’s best platforms. Higher education expects the best of its student and professors, and the same standards should apply when choosing a cloud storage provider.
—
Tunio Zafer is the CEO of cloud storage platform pCloud. As a leader and manager in the cloud storage space, Tunio promotes innovation in areas such as security measures and cost to end users. Tunio encourages forward thinking throughout his team, working toward making a significant impact on the rapidly growing IT market, for individuals and business alike.
0 Comments