Use of online collaborative tools in information services: an intervention project in scholarly communication

Academic libraries are created to support the curriculum, teaching, learning and research of academic staff and students of higher education institutions. For that purpose, academic libraries can provide a wide variety of information services to support the educational context in which they operate. Thus, the library information services of higher education institutions need to promote and enhance their users’ skills related to the scientific and academic communication of undergraduate and graduate students. In higher education, one of the most common problems of first-year students, and also of other ones, is the difficulty in knowing and applying the rules of writing and presentation of scientific and academic papers that they must submit to be evaluated. Several studies show a significant lack of knowledge on the part of students about these subjects. Based on this background, as a final project of an Information and Communication Technologies course, from an undergraduate course in Information Science, a student team carried out a project work to create a training course on academic writing. A set of collaborative online tools were used, and a wide range of outputs to support the training course was conceived. This paper aims to present the methodology followed in carrying out this project work, and the outcomes created, using a set of collaborative online tools, (Trello, Asana, Sway, Powtoon and Canva) to plan, manage, disseminate and implement this training course on academic writing, for undergraduate students of a Faculty of Arts and Humanities. This work shows that free online collaborative tools offer new possibilities for information services to create activities and materials with little investment.