10 essential apps every graduate student needs to stay on top of things

The need to master essential online tools has increased drastically as learning and working has moved to the virtual world. Being a graduate student often involves research projects and thesis writing, and incorporating helpful tools into the process, helps you be more productive and increases your work-life balance and employability. 

From productivity boosters to apps to help you unwind, here are our top ten picks to add to your toolkit:

1. Udemy

Employers are looking for candidates with a range of technical and soft skills under their belt. Because you may need to hone on these separately in an online class or MOOC, Concordia grants its graduate students free access to Udemy. It has more than 4,000 high-quality online courses and several learning paths. 

Take charge of your self-development or boost your efficiency with Your Guide To Memory And Learning Skills or Machine Learning A-Z: Hands-On Python & R In Data Science, Improve your French language skills with 3-minute French lessons. Polish the skills required by today's job market with Data Analysis | SQL,Tableau, Power BI & Excel and The Complete 2020 Web Development Bootcamp or learn something new just for fun such as Photography Masterclass: A Complete Guide to Photography.

2. Office 365 Education

Active Concordia students have free access to the Office 365 Education package with their Concordia email account. This not only includes Microsoft Office Tools like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Tasks, and OneNote), but also 1 TB of OneDrive storage, Yammer, and SharePoint sites. This means that all your work can be saved and shared in the cloud, while keeping it synced across devices. 

3. Zotero

Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software, endorsed by Concordia's Library. You can organize and store your bibliography, choose among citation styles, export sources as a citation or a reference list, add notes and insert attachments. Online tutorials can help you master Zotero, or you can register for the GradProSkills workshop Zotero for Grads (GPLL243) with Concordia Library. 

Install the web browser extension or integrate with Microsoft Windows and Google Docs for more streamlined working. One of its best features is collaborating with others on a group assignment so that it automatically reorders the references shared on the same Zotero group library.

4. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is also available to all Concordia students as part of the package. It is a secure and practical tool to organize your teammates in group projects. You'll get to share documents, have a group chat session, assign tasks to other group members and even hold video meetings - all in one place. Maximize the use of Teams capabilities by taking the Udemy course Up and Running with Microsoft Teams.

5. Grammarly/Quillbot

Editing and proofreading is crucial for your thesis, project reports and professional emails, especially if English is not your first language. Grammarly and Quillbot will flag typos, grammar, and sentence structure issues on various devices like your computer, phone and tablet. You have the basic app features for free, and for more robust support, you can sign up for the premium packages.

6. Task Management Apps

There is a lot to juggle in grad school. To stay on top of your weekly readings, assignments and research, we highly recommend a task management tool like Trello or Microsoft Tasks. These tools help you plan, organize and keep track of your academic projects by mapping out milestones, breaking tasks into smaller tasks, tagging colleagues and much more! 

7. Focus Apps

Does the statement "phones and social media are big distractors and top productivity killers" resonate with you? If yes, we recommend you install focus apps like Freedom or Serene on your phone or use the Pomodoro timer technique. These apps block unwanted app notifications for scheduled periods to increase your focus on what is important to you. 

If you feel motivated when writing at a café but can’t go to one, why not recreate that working ambience? Or perhaps you enjoy the sound of rain or cottage fire in the background. Check out this cool YouTube channel with cafe background sounds or other sounds to help keep you focused.

8. Note-taking Apps

Note-taking is an essential part of grad school, whether it’s in a classroom or just to jot down your thoughts. We recommend note-taking apps such as Obsidian and Papership to have in your disposal. Obsidian is a free app available across multiple platforms and has great features, such as creating links between multiple notes. If you prefer to read, annotate, and highlight your readings in a pdf format using a tablet instead of a paper version, then we recommend Papership. Both tools have plugins that allow syncing with Zotero. These amazing tools are must-haves in your grad school journey.

9. Free File Storage, Transfer & Collaboration

Nothing could be more devastating than losing your research due to the lack of having a back-up. Storing your research material safely in more than one location is imperative. There are several free options that can help you: your student Office365 OneDrive storage comes with 1TB storage, Google Drive stores up to 15GB. If you are transferring large files, you can also try WeTransfer.

In addition to saving your documents to your Office365 OneDrive, a Microsoft Teams site or your Google drive, these platforms are excellent ways to collaborate with peers on a team project. Instead of attaching the file to an email, try sharing a link to the file so everyone can view and edit the file in real-time. Plus, changes to the file are automatically tracked, creating versions, so it is easier to go back and review everyone’s input. You can also try Notion to collaborate with your team and keep track of the group projects.

10. Generative AI Apps

Generative AI (GenAI) has become a game changer for students and researchers, and you should add it to your toolkit to enhance your creativity and increase your productivity. In addition to commonly used ChatGPT and Gemini, leverage powerful apps such as Consensus and Elicit to gain insight from academic papers, Perplexity to gather information from properly cited sources, NotebookLM to analyze large amounts of information, and Dall.E2 to generate images. Become an expert user of GenAI by utilizing the resources available on Udemy but always make sure that using GenAI is approved, acknowledged, and cited.

For more details about using GenAI in your academic writing and learning how use these tools ethically, check out the Student Success Centre list of suggestions for using Generative AI.