College Group Projects made easier with YakGroups

YakGroups was designed to eliminate several common difficulties (or "pain points" as they're known in the "biz") associated with college group projects:

1. Gathering the contact info of group members
2. Ensuring that everyone knows the group ToDo list
3. Assigning ToDo's to group members and giving them due dates
4. Coordinating discussions about items on the ToDo list

In the following sections, I will elaborate on how YakGroups helps with each of the points above.

Problem 1: Gathering the contact info of group members

In every single college group project I have had, the very first thing I always did was gather everyone's contact information so I could email them later. This was annoying because it involved lots of tedious steps. For example:

1. Open Excel and expand the column widths
2. Have all the group members type in contact info
3. Save the file for later use
4. After getting home, open a new email message
5. Copy in everyone's contact info
6. Write out a long email explaining how we are going to use Google Docs or whatever

YakGroups eliminates this by giving you a tool to gather everyone's contact information with 1-click on the homepage. Literally, I'm not kidding! Follow the screenshots to see what I mean:

This is the homepage, you click the big red button.

And look! You are gathering everyone's contact information!

After your group members type in their contact info, YakGroups will automatically email them all, inviting them back to your new YakGroups site. Their user accounts will already be created for them, all they will have to do is set their password.

So with YakGroups, instead of 6 steps it is down to just 3 easy steps

1. Go to YakGroups.com and click the big red button
2. Have your group members type in their contact info
3. Click "Save and Email New Members"

That's half as many steps. No opening big, bulky Excel, no painstaking copying of email addresses, and (best of all) no writing a long explanation email. College group projects are getting easier already!

Problem 2: Ensuring that everyone knows the group ToDo list

Currently, most group projects are coordinated through a large number of email messages. This is ok if you have a small college group project and not more than two people in the group, but with even moderately sized college group projects the email method of group coordination starts to break down.

In my college group projects, many things start to fail using emails:

1. The ToDo list gets sent to the group, people reply back with modifications, and then nobody knows what the "real" ToDo list is anymore
2. People reply to old emails without having read the latest emails about a particular ToDo item
3. People endlessly re-copy old information into emails to make sure everyone knows the most "current" information about a ToDo, making them longer and more difficult to read
4. And the list goes on....

The point is, emails are not that great for managing projects that involve multiple people. That is why all companies spend big bucks on some form of project management software (be it MS Project or whatnot) and exactly why I have made YakGroups: to bring easy-to-use and FREE project management to college group projects! Everyone can afford free, I don't care how tight your college budget is!

To eliminate that mess of emails that plagues your inbox, your YakGroups Site has one simple group ToDo list. With the group ToDo List, you can:

1. Share one common ToDo list with the whole group
2. Drag to reorder the ToDo list
3. Ensure that everyone knows exactly what items are on the ToDo list
4. Mark ToDo items as complete
5. Write a "description" about the ToDo right on the item itself

Take a look at what I mean!

Just looking at that picture I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that I'll never again try and manage a college group project using an endless mess of criss-crossed emails!

Problem 3: Assigning Todo's to group members and giving them due dates

Again, college group projects have traditionally been coordinated by everyone sending a bunch of emails to everyone else. Using that method, I have found that some of the most critical information often gets lost in the mess. Namely:

1. Who is responsibe for completing the ToDo item
2. When they should have the ToDo completed

I can't tell you how many times I have had people tell me that they didn't know they were responsible for a particular ToDo item. Making matters worse, since I'm usually the "responsible one" I get dragged into helping them complete the ToDo item through the wee hours of the morning so we can turn in that part of the college group project early the next morning!

With YakGroups, slacking group members can no longer claim "they didn't see the email!" To help college group projects, YakGroups has three nice benefits:

1. The "Quick Add" allows you to set the due date and who it is assigned to while you're typing out the ToDo
2. The ToDo item can be reassigned to different or additional group members with a few clicks
3. The ToDo item can be dragged onto the calendar to change the due date

See how you can set the due date and assign it to group members right through the Quick Add?

You can change the due date or who it is assigned to by editing the ToDo's details

Drag-a-mania! ToDo's can be dragged onto the calendar to set their due date or drag ToDo items already on the calendar to a new date to change its due date.

I am especially proud of the Quick Add because it is so flexible. Just type in the ToDo item, its due date, and who it is assigned to using natural everyday language! For example:

• Report on Paper Sales due next Monday by Jim and Pam
• At 3pm on Jan 22nd by Dwight: New Marketing Plan for Dunder Mifflin
• Accounts Report due in 3 days by Stanley, Phyllis
• 2/14 8am Michael Send Happy Valentines email to entire company

You get the point! The "Quick Add" allows you to easily type in ToDo's and assign them to people in your college group project!

Problem 4: Coordinating discussions about items on the ToDo list

Obviously, discussions about your college group project almost always take place over email. It is probably pretty clear to you by now that trying manage the college group project through emails is fraught with inefficiencies. YakGroups is expressly designed to provide a much easier and more structured (and more sane) way of coordinating your college group project.

What often happens with group discussions via email:

1. People are too lazy to type in everyone's email address, so they just reply to any ol' email that happens to have everyone's email address already filled in regardless of the subject or whatever was discussed in the previous email
2. Since they just replied to any old email, the subject and quoted text may not be at all relevant to what they are talking about and so the receiver either: (1) ignores it since the subject doesn't concern them or (2) gets confused since there is a disconnect with the quoted text
3. People reference a ToDo item in their email, but they can't remember the "official" title of the ToDo item and so they make up a new one, causing everyone that receives the email to be slightly unsure of what exactly they are talking about

Coordinating and managing college group projects through emails is simply a mess!

To help improve the situation, YakGroups provides threaded discussions. This is a huge benefit to communicating with your group members because:

1. You don't have to remember anybody's email address since YakGroups does that for you
2. Your group members are more likely to start new threaded discussions with relevant subject headings when the situation merits it
3. Your group members will reply to the appropriate discussion instead of just any old one since YakGroups has made it easier to do
4. You can drag ToDo items onto discussions to link the Discussion and the ToDo item together

Linking the Discussion and the ToDo item is a very nice feature since it allows you and your group members to be perfectly clear about which ToDo items you are talking about. No more hazy references to what the group member was assigned, now there's perfect clarity about the exact ToDo item they are referencing!

See how you can drag ToDo's onto Discussions to link them together? Now the Discussion will have links to the ToDo item and vice-versa!

Conclusion:

Group Projects, more often than not, are a horrible mess because the tool that is most commonly used, a huge jumble of emails, is not properly suited to the task! Why should you continue trying to use messy emails when a FREE alternative is available to help with your college group projects?

Try YakGroups now at http://www.YakGroups.com