Collaboration is one of the cornerstone principals of scientific discovery, and digital tools are providing new ways for collaboration to occur, connecting students and enabling them to experience working in teams in a whole new way (Midtlund et al., 2021). By breaking down some of the barriers associated with multiple people working on the same task, it frees up student time and effort to work seamlessly on the tasks at hand. This not only increases the efficiency of students sharing resources, fostering communication and promoting group work, but prepares them for workplaces that increasingly rely on digital teamwork.

In science classroom settings, collaboration might be working together on a lab report, brainstorming or analysing data. Platforms such as Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams of or integrated into school learning management systems where students can collaboratively work on documents or virtual whiteboards, seeing their collaboration in real-time. The further advantage is that this collaboration is not limited to sitting next to each other in a classroom or library, it can be extended to homework, and with the right access permissions, teachers can jump in to provide help or guidance when necessary.

Digital collaboration also extends beyond group-work, it can be used to facilitate debate and exploration of scientific perspectives and ideas. It can involve lab simulations, collective participation in practicals that are outside the scope of a classroom environment. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced an immediate need for the shift to distance learning, some of the benefits drawn are the integration of some of those tools into more traditional education settings to aid in empowering teamwork and collaboration.

For teachers to be able to encourage and monitor the correct usage of these tools, they first need to become familiar with them themselves. So how do we level up this knowledge and provide a platform for facilitating student collaboration with digital tools? Below are a series of links to common spaces that facilitate digital collaboration to serve a s a stepping stone to finding the appropriate tools for your classroom and students.