It is up to each individual group to work out the best way to coordinate between its members. Students currently find themselves in a wide variety of circumstances, so what works for one group may not work for another. Groups must find a way to communicate that accommodates the needs of all of their members. (If you are having trouble accommodating everyone, please contact me so we can try to find a solution.)

The purpose of this page is to list a few tools that might be useful for students and groups in different circumstances. It is nowhere near exhaustive, but I hope it will be of some use. Some things to keep in mind as you discuss alternatives with your group members:

• Internet access. With campus closed, many students will not have reliable access to online resources. Some students will only have access through limited mobile connections. Others may be in areas with slow or non-existent connections. This means that bandwidth-intensive means of communication may be impractical or impossible for some members of your group.
• Time zones. Many McGill students are finishing the semester from different countries and different parts of the world. What might seem like a convenient time to meet for certain group members could be the middle of the night for other group members. It is possible that some groups won’t be able to meet at the same time, and will have to use asynchronous methods of communication.
• Privacy. Students who are staying with their families or are in another shared living situation may not have access to a quiet, private space to have a discussion. Groups should not assume that their members are able to use a camera to meet even with high-speed internet access.
• Accessibility. Remote meetings can create new barriers to participation for students with disabilities. Groups should accommodate their members’ different needs to whatever degree possible, for example by including captions and transcriptions for group meetings and conversations (see automatic transcription tools below).

The following free tools provide live video/audio chat.

• Jitsi Meet (https://meet.jit.si/)
  No signup; requires only a web browser; users can phone in

• Zoom (https://zoom.us/)
  Not everyone needs an account; easily recordable; users can phone in

• Google Hangouts (https://hangouts.google.com/)
  Automatic captions; requires Google account

• Skype (https://www.skype.com/)
  Automatic captions; requires Skype account

These tools do a (relatively) good job of creating automatic transcriptions of video and audio recordings. This can be useful to make your meetings more accessible and to create a searchable record of the meetings.

• YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/)
  Can automatically create captions for a video, but be careful about your privacy settings; requires a Google account.

• Microsoft Stream (https://www.microsoftstream.com)
  Similar to YouTube, but accounts are included with Office365.

• Otter.ai (https://otter.ai/)
  Transcribes live and pre-recorded video and audio files. Free for 600 minutes of transcription per month.

There are many, many tools for text communication. A couple of good, free, feature-rich options are:

• CampusWire (https://campuswire.com); the default choice for this course

• Slack (https://www.youtube.com/)

• Riot.im (https://about.riot.im/)