Improving Communication and Building Communities with Google

Abstract

With assistance from the Academic Technology arm of Information Technology (IT), Pima Community College staff and faculty have been improving communication and building learning communities to meet the growing academic demands of our community. Utilizing Google Hangouts, college employees can quickly and easily communicate with struggling students, offering a variety of services including counseling, advising, and tutoring. Faculty have explored Google's ability to share relevant documents, images and videos to create personalized learning environments for students and peers. Employee groups have also explored the use of Google+ Communities as a means to storing departmental artifacts and chronicling the evolution of departmental processes. When used as a knowledge base for current and future employees, Google and its variety of apps create synergy of learning, collaboration and services between faculty, staff and students. This paper describes how IT has worked with stakeholders to leverage Google tools and address a variety of concerns to improve communication and build communities. The presenter will provide how-to examples to using and implementing these tools and hands-on activities for session participants.