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How To Guide: NoodleTools Citing & Research: Set Up a Collaboration

This guide is chock full of tutorials that will show you how to create an account, work with projects, create citations, and do other research tasks in NoodleTools

How to Set Up a Collaborative Project with Your Classmates

In NoodleTools, you can work together with your classmates on a project. You will be able to share source references, notecards, the outline, and the Google Doc linked to the project. You can also exchange comments or questions about the project.

On this page:

How to Add a Collaborator to Your Project
How to Locate and Open a Collaborative Project
How to Determine What Team Members Are Currently Working on a Project
How to Know When a Team Member Has Made a Change
How to Find Out What Changes Were Made to the Project
How to Add or Respond to a Comment or Question About the Project
How to Delete or Recover a Deleted Project

How to Add a Collaborator to Your Project

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.

Choosing a classmate for collaborationIf 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. 

Choosing a classmate for collaboration

3. If you have a Google Doc linked to the project to share, click Share paper in the Paper column. You may be prompted to log into your Google 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 Google 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.

How to Locate and Open a Collaborative Project

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).

How to Determine What Team Members are Currently Working on the Project

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.

Who is online?

How to Know When a Team Member Has Made a Change

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.

Notification of a change in the project

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.

How to Find Out What Changes Were Made to the Project

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.

Project History Log

How to Add or Respond to a Comment or Question About the Project

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

How to Delete or Recover a Deleted Project

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.

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