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Congratulations and thanks to Dr. Arindam Basu and the Research Committee of the College of Education, Health, and Human Development (CoEHHD) for organizing an interactive Overleaf overview presentation at the University of Canterbury at Christchurch in New Zealand.

As a champion of collaborative research, Arin’s aim for this workshop was to introduce and encourage the use of Overleaf as a collaborative writing tool among students and academic faculty members. In addition, Arin is creating some basic tutorials that will be available soon in Overleaf’s help section of the website. We value Arin’s continued use, support, and promotion of Overleaf.

As a result, Overleaf is delighted to name Arin Basu as Advisor of the Month for November, 2015. Thank you Arin!

Read Arin’s summary of this great event here:

Overleaf Advisor Presentation at the University of Canterbury at Christchurch by Arin Basu

Worldwide collaboration among scholars, research teams, institutions, universities, and countries for research is increasing [1]. At the heart of this increase is the use of web and cloud as media for collaboration, writing research publications, and applications for funding.

As the impact of collaborative research continues to grow, researchers are increasingly feeling the need for Overleaf-like tools. Overleaf, in particular, fosters collaborative research from several angles. Using a structured text system (LaTeX), it makes it easy for teams to work on documents in the cloud. It uses several channels of communication among researchers and, importantly, makes it easy for research teams to submit publications to journals by providing templates, thus saving time. University academics pressed for time may find Overleaf particularly useful.

At the University of Canterbury at Christchurch, New Zealand, the Research Committee of the College of Education, Health, and Human Development (CoEHHD) organised a workshop on Overleaf on the 10th of November, 2015. The aim of this workshop was to introduce and encourage the use of Overleaf as a collaborative writing tool among students and academic faculty members. This seminar was planned as part of the CoEHHD Research Committee's ongoing efforts to encourage research productivity.

This was a two-hour workshop, formatted as a web enhanced seminar. It used an online, web-based presentation tool, on-site discussion, and hands-on experience with Overleaf. It was in two parts: an introduction to Overleaf, and hands-on experience of working with Overleaf. In the first part, using an online connection, Dr John Lees-Miller, one of the co-founders of Overleaf, introduced the platform in detail. He began with its origins, described the key features, and demonstrated it on-screen. In the hands-on part, Dr Arindam Basu, a senior lecturer at the School of Health Sciences and an Overleaf advisor, guided the workshop attendees on how to use Overleaf. In the hands-on section, the participants learned how to write collaboratively on Overleaf, add citations, and a few other features while working with it.

Fifteen academics and students (PhD and Master degree students) within and outside of the University, participated in the workshop. The participants belonged to the departments of education, health, and social sciences. Most had little experience of working with \LaTeX or Overleaf. The attendees found working with Overleaf easy and intuitive. In their reflections on the workshop, they appreciated that they had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Lees-Miller for questions and answers throughout the session. In particular, the participants appreciated the strength of Overleaf in making academic writing intuitive and wanted to learn more about the tool. You can view the full video recording of the session at the webinar site.

If you are interested in becoming an Overleaf Advisor and/or hosting a learning event at an affiliated institution, please feel free to visit our Advisor page for more information.

[1] https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/knowledge-networks-nations/report/