The six tricks everyone should know

Many simple time-saving technologies are underused in the academia – by staff and/or by faculty. This results in hundreds of thousands of wasted work hours, not to mention the frustration of tedious work. Here are the six technologies everyone should learn to be a little less tired, and to save time and energy for more creative, more fulfilling and meaningful work. The first five are at least 20 years old, the sixth one is a little newer.

1. Mail merge is extremely useful in communication with students, especially if you teach larger classes. The essential tension of teaching is between the need to provide personal attention to each student and the lack of time to do so. The mail merge provides a small but effective way of addressing it. You can write 60 individualized emails to your students in a few minutes. Imagine something like this: “Dear …, thank you for sending me your paper titled ….; I enjoyed reading it. Your strength are … However, you still need to work on ….. Here is the break-down of your grade: Mechanics … out of 10, clarity … out of 10, insight … out of 10; total … out of 30. I am looking forward to reading your next paper. If you have any questions regarding your grade, please do not hesitate to write me back. However, if you think I made an error grading, please send me a detailed explanation with specific references to your text.” It is virtually impossible to write these emails individually; no one has the kind of time. However, with Mail Merge, all you need is a table with brief comments that fit into the fields. It creates a bit of an illusion for students, but there is nothing unethical about appearing a little more personal and attentive than you actually can afford to be. 
2. AutoText is an equivalent of old rubber stamps some professors used to have. If you grade many papers it could be a life-saver. For example, I used to type dm, and then F3. In the text of the student paper, the following entry would instantly appear: "THIS IS A DANGLING MODIFIER (DM), A WORD OR PHRASE THAT MODIFIES (DESCRIBES, CLARIFIES, OR GIVES MORE DETAIL ABOUT) A WORD NOT CLEARLY STATED IN THE SENTENCE. DON’T WORRY, IT IS A VERY COMMON MISTAKE, BUT YOU NEED TO LEARN TO AVOID MAKING IT IN THE FUTURE. READ MORE ABOUT DANGLING MODIFIERS HERE. There is no need to copy and paste, AutoText will remember this entry for as long as you own the computer (it is stored in the Normal template). It requires a minimal initial investment of time, but save much time subsequently, and provides better service to students. 
3. Tables of Content. Anyone who writes longer documents – books, dissertations, reports – should learn this thing. If you consistently apply styles to your headings, go to References, and Insert Table of contents. It’s kind of magic. 
4. Online surveys. Any time you’re asking several people a series of questions, you probably want to end up with a spreadsheet rather than with a stack of index cards. The reason is obvious – it takes less time to process: you can sort, filter those, and use for Mail Merge to communicate back. When to use online survey-like forms? The answer is – ALWAYS, unless there is a legal reason to collect original signature. This covers 99.9% of all office paperwork, and many cases in teaching. Any time you are receiving an email from each student to get a particular piece of information, you are wasting your time, and should instead use a survey. Several commercial providers have been around for a long time; most will let you do a small survey for free. Google Forms is completely free and you can publish the result link. 
5. Pivot Tables. Anyone who works with large sets of data in Excel should invest a little time in learning Pivot Tables. If you find yourself constantly sorting, filtering, cutting and pasting, “stacking” columns on top of each other, you probably will be better off with pivoting. Just select the data you are trying to make a sense of, go to Insert, Pivot Table. Persist for a few minutes playing with it, and your life will never be the same. 
6. Google Docs and Google Sites (now also the Google Drive). This is the only “newer” piece of underused technology, that started in about 2007. Any time you catch yourself sending a document for review, then receiving comments, and incorporating them back into the original document, you should feel a pinch of guilt and think of docs. A large part of our work is collaborative, and it results in a document being published online. This technology allows to skip most of the steps in between. If you end up with a website anyway, why go through all the preliminary drafts? Just create a blank site or document, let many people contribute their pieces, read, critique and review – all at the same time.