Building a digital campus: 5 ways a cloud storage solution can help

If there's one thing the current pandemic has made us realize, it's the power of internet technology to keep us connected. This is all the more pronounced in the education sector. Colleges and universities are able to deliver uninterrupted education, thanks to virtual collaboration tools. If you are a traditional institute looking for ways to digitize your campus, we've put together five helpful tips on the benefits of an online file storage platform and how it helps in building a connected campus.

1. Curating a digital library
A library is the knowledge storehouse of any institute. Almost all students and researchers prefer instant and convenient access to books and other reading materials. An online file storage solution simplifies library management by helping curators to catalogue e-books and journals into public folders. Platforms like Zoho WorkDrive offer both mobile and web apps for faculty and students to quickly access these materials, even when they are not present in the campus.

2. Managing the curriculum
Universities generally offer multiple disciplines. With a good file management system in place, a humanities or engineering professor can create their own team folders and add the syllabus content. Students from their departments would then have an exclusive place to access their curriculum. This helps do away with a lot of paperwork distribution and keeps the course content always within the students' reach.

3. Working on assignments and submissions
Some cloud storage apps offer a built-in office suite too. These apps let you create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets and enable content collaboration. With these tools, groups of students can team up to work on a project report or a presentation online. They no longer have to meet up outside of class or burn the midnight oil to complete their submissions in time.

4. Collaborating on research projects
More often than not, research scholars collaborate with experts from around the world. From working on preparatory reports to gathering feedback on their thesis, most research fellows need a lot of back and forth communication with their project guide. Managing the whole chain of communication over emails can become tedious, but the external sharing feature in a good cloud storage platform gives researchers a seamless way of sharing their work with stakeholders outside the campus.

5. Protecting your content and patents
From a security standpoint, many institutes might have reservations on moving to a fully digital system. To alleviate such concerns, most modern cloud storage solutions guarantee robust security standards to protect course content and other intellectual property saved as files. For instance, Zoho WorkDrive is GDPR compliant and adheres to ISO 27001 and SOC-2 standards, ensuring your institution's data stays secure at both the physical and digital levels.

E-learning has become mainstream as technology develops, and the internet has made knowledge sharing more democratic. To keep up with these changes, schools and colleges need to adopt modern solutions to stay relevant in the education arena. A file storage and content collaboration platform is an important part of an institute's technology transformation and can help facilitate convenient teaching and learning.