Google Drive offers quick and easy ways to share files with students enrolled in your classes. But if Desire2Learn does this already, then why bother using Google Drive? Here’s some advantages of using Google Drive (in addition to D2L):
- You can edit Google Docs at any time within your Google Drive. This is quicker than editing and replacing a file uploaded to D2L.
- Videos will play in D2L, but often not as reliably or quickly as Google Drive.
- For faculty using some of the same files in multiple courses–such as adjunct faculty teaching on multiple campuses–it’s easier to have a common file linked in several course sections, perhaps in two different Learning Management Systems, then have the same file uploaded in several places.
- If need be, it’s easy to share a file with someone not enrolled in your course, such as a colleague teaching a similar course.
- Faculty can easily create common files (for example, text instructions in a Google Doc, or perhaps a tutorial video for discipline-specific procedures) for use in various courses within a program, and have those files linked in several courses simultaneously.
This video shows various options for linking and sharing files with students in Desire2Learn. It discusses various levels of security or privacy available to faculty sharing content in Google Drive.