Microsoft OneDrive is available to U of T instructors through Microsoft 365. OneDrive provides cloud storage for your files and folders. Visit the U of T Microsoft 365 for Faculty & Staff page for eligibility, access, and technical information.
For teaching and learning, OneDrive can support organizing and sharing course files, collaboration, and collections of student work. Using OneDrive with Quercus (Canvas)? Visit Microsoft OneDrive in Quercus (Canvas) for information about adding files to your course, creating collaborations, and using OneDrive with assignments.
Store and Organize Course Files
OneDrive provides a central location for storing and organizing course files. Files stored in OneDrive can be accessed across devices when you sign in with your U of T account, making it easier to work with your teaching materials wherever you are.
Consider using OneDrive to:
- Organize course materials: Create folders for courses, modules, assessments, or other teaching materials.
- Store backups: Keep copies of important teaching materials in OneDrive rather than relying on files stored only on a local device or in Quercus.
- Maintain course materials: Update and organize files as your course develops.
Use Quercus Files for files that students need to access as part of your course, and OneDrive for storing, organizing, and working with your source files. Keeping copies in OneDrive also makes it easier to maintain materials outside a specific Quercus course and reuse them in future course offerings.
Share Files and Folders
OneDrive allows you to share individual files or entire folders and control whether others can view or edit the content. This can be useful for sharing materials with students or colleagues without creating and distributing separate copies.
When sharing from OneDrive:
- Choose the appropriate permission: Decide whether others need to view the content or make changes.
- Share with specific people: Limit access to particular individuals or groups when materials should not be available more broadly.
- Preserve original files: When sharing a template or other file that students should modify individually, provide a copy rather than giving them edit access to the original.
- Review access: Check and update sharing permissions when people no longer need access to a file or folder.
Visit Microsoft’s Share files and folders in OneDrive page for instructions on managing sharing and permissions.
Collaborate on Shared Files
Files stored in OneDrive can support real-time collaboration in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Multiple people can work in the same file, allowing students to contribute to shared work without creating and exchanging separate copies.
Consider using shared files for:
- Collaborative writing: Draft and revise a Word document together.
- Shared data collection and analysis: Collect, organize, or analyze information in Excel.
- Group presentations: Develop a PowerPoint presentation together.
- Shared planning: Use documents or spreadsheets to plan projects, distribute tasks, or track progress.
- Collaborative resources: Develop glossaries, study materials, reference lists, or other shared resources.
Ask students to sign in with their U of T accounts when collaborating so their names appear with their contributions. For files stored in OneDrive, you can also use version history to review or restore earlier versions. For more ideas about using Word for collaborative activities, explore the Microsoft Word resource.
Work with PDF Files
OneDrive includes tools for viewing, annotating, and organizing PDF files. Available features vary between the web and mobile versions of OneDrive.
You can use OneDrive to:
- Annotate and mark up PDFs: Highlight text, draw, add shapes, and add notes directly to a PDF.
- Organize pages: Rotate pages, extract selected pages into a new PDF, or merge multiple PDFs.
- Navigate longer PDFs: Use an embedded table of contents, when available, to move between sections.
- Adjust your reading experience: Some mobile versions of OneDrive include bookmarks and options for changing the appearance of PDFs.
Visit Microsoft’s Features available for PDFs in OneDrive page for current features, platform availability, and instructions.
Support Portfolios and Ongoing Collections
OneDrive can support file-based portfolios and collections of student work that develop over time. Students can add documents, presentations, images, links, and other artefacts to folders that can be shared with instructors or others.
There are different ways to set up a OneDrive portfolio:
- Create folders for students: Create and share an individual folder with each student, then ask students to add their work to that folder over time. This approach allows you to provide a consistent structure for each student’s portfolio.
- Ask students to create and share folders: Have each student create and organize their own portfolio folder in OneDrive and share it with you. This approach gives students more control over how they select, organize, and present their work.
Consider asking students to use their portfolios to:
- Collect artefacts: Add assignments, projects, presentations, images, links, or other examples of their work.
- Document progress: Keep drafts and other materials that demonstrate how their work develops over time.
- Connect work to learning: Select evidence related to particular learning outcomes, skills, or experiences.
- Add reflection: Include documents that explain their choices, learning, or development alongside the artefacts they collect.
For a dedicated portfolio environment within Quercus, consider Quercus Portfolios.