What are the best productivity tools for university students?

Question

We all want to start fresh next semester. What are some of your recommended tools?

Jessi Lu · Accepted Answer

Zenkit is great for projects, collaboration and working with data. You can switch between different view to work with the best one for each of your tasks. If you want to make an overview of your course I would recommend starting with the mind map but you can also use an easy listview, kanban board or table view. It´s free for up to 5 people but we may have some arrangements with your university;)

Felipe Esteves · Answer

Once you get how Notion works, it really excels in project management, research and database. It's a pleasure to use and super customizable.

Ola Rybacka · Answer

A time tracking software perfect for recording time spent on learning each subject. Delivers reports on we spent time productive or non-productive.

Ryan Soderberg · Answer

The BEST todo-list app on the market IMO. I have folders for each of my classes and clubs and can organize all of my assignments within. I also use IFTTT to integrate it with my Trello tasks and Google Calendar. Oh yeah, and it's FREE!

Andrei Țiț · Answer

It helps all the university parties involved - students, professors, and departments - in the following way:

• Students keep all their lecture notes in one place and collaborate easily with their colleagues, even when not in the classroom
• Professors schedule their courses in advance (even for the whole semester), as well as add resources, notes, and assignments to create the course curricula, then share them with their students
• The marketing and other departments have a tunnel-like view on what's top priority, and can track their time for future job estimations.

Plus it's free for one year, all features included, without any limitations whatsoever.

Ecem · Answer

Jotform is an online form-creating tool with thousands of free templates and layouts. There are lots of educational surveys and forms for university students. I think this tool will help them at their research projects. Most importantly it is free :)

Antoine Frédéric · Answer

Trello is awesome, and here is why :
- it's a "sandbox" (you can create whatever you want with Trello)
- very simple to use
- tons of ways to automatize your boards (Zapier, IFTTT, Power-Ups ...)
- you can stock ideas, tasks or goals easily

Milo B. · Answer

I only started using it a couple of days ago, but I swear my university, work, and private life make much more sense to me now. The UI is minimal and bright, but doesn't get boring because of emojis and cover images. The templates are a-plenty and very useful, and if a template is missing – you can just create your own page from scratch, using one of Notion's many block elements!

Answer

If you are a visual learner this is the ultimate tool.

Biraj Ghosh · Answer

It's feature rich enough yet simple enough for student use.

Pavel · Answer

TimeBit helps to focus on current and distract less. It`s a combination of timer & to-do list & routine builder made to keep focus on what`s really matters.

Amokrane Tamine · Answer

You can communicate, share files, assign tasks with this all-in-one tool

Ethan · Answer

The best todo list app out there, really nice UI! Can also be used for note taking, which is a bonus. It is very flexible - it can be used as a vertical Kanban, weekly planner, simple todo list or bullet journal! It can even be used for collaboration with a built in chat. TRY IT 😻

Frank Feustel · Answer

If you want to take notes for your lectures try Shelly. If allows you to directly add your notes to your timetable, once connected with your Google or Outlook class schedule. Perfect!

Ryan Soderberg · Answer

I use Newton for my email client and I couldn't live without it. It is one of the only (possibly the only) email clients that gives you a notification when your emails get opened. Great for when you email your professors. I think it's about $4/month if I recall.

Antoine Frédéric · Answer

Todoist is a beast. You can combine it with Trello for a powerful organization. Trello in the background, Todoist for your everyday life !

Brenna L · Answer

In addition to being ranked by The Verge & Engadet as the #1 to-do list app, Todoist has a 50% discount for students/educators: https://todoist.com/education.

Thomas DIDIER · Answer

Slite is the first note app designed specifically for teams ✍️ It's the one place where teams create, organize and find content in a flash ⚡from meeting notes, to how to's, to collaborative docs and more.

Gary Fung · Answer

Dig into any topic on the Web fast, on the go.

Sachin Rekhi · Answer

Great for class notes, projects, task lists, and more.

Answer

The first app comes to mind is AppLock. I am sure many people are worried about their phone privacy, but they don’t know how to deal with it. There are some apps that you can use to prevent people from snooping around your phone or even look through it without your permission. AppLock is one of them. But that’s not why I recommend it. The most interesting feature in this app is intruder selfie, which takes picture of the people who input the wrong password. I like this feature because on day I left my phone at home, when I got back, there are several selfies taken by AppLock shows that my kids are trying to use my phone. You really need to try this feature, it’s really funny to see these unexpected selfies. You will laugh, trust me!

bazingagag · Answer

Mobile security is more and more important nowadays, that’s why I think no matter who you are, what you do. You will need an app to protect your phone!

I am using this app called ‘AppLock’, which is amazing because it can lock all of my apps, images even videos. This app is always on my list when it comes to app recommendation.

The one thing that I like the most about this app is that it can take photos of the person who’s trying to unlock your phone! This feature is really funny because I always got the intruder selfie notification from my kids. They are trying really hard to unlock my phone for video games.

If you are a cautious people, you really do need one of this app.

Crystal Chen · Answer

It has got a clear hierarchy: tasks, projects and organization. You can add "semesters" as organizations, "courses" as projects and "assignments" as tasks. Each task comes with its own description, start and due date and time, priority, etc. You can also use sort and/or filter to help you stay focused, so never miss out on anything!

Filipa Nascimento · Answer

With Outplanr you can add your classmates to your projects, assign them tasks or invite them your events. It’s an easy way to work together, because you can also comment on each one of those tasks and events, and keep things progressing.

Shohini Gupta · Answer

Just has every functionality - organizing classes taking notes personal project management... I run everything on Notion

Sergey Bushtruk · Answer

The best for students :)

Ryan Soderberg · Answer

Amazing program for correcting your work before you turn it in. I also paste my essays and emails in this app when I finish them just to double check for errors. Free version available, but paid is better obviously.

Mike · Answer

Lanes is big with the studyblr community and has built lots of features just for them! Pomodoro timer, notes, squads (so you can compare productivity with friends) and more neat features to keep you productive.

Can't promise you an A+ in your finals, but Lanes will definitely keep you focused.

Sergey Grushevoy · Answer

I use this app to planning my goals, tasks, projects.

Sergey Grushevoy · Answer

This is a very simple and free web app. The application has many useful features: notes, projects, budgets, reports, contacts etc.

Harpreet Singh · Answer

Okay This website will allow you to study with your favourite music along with blocking the distraction caused on your computer/laptop screen. So this will be great for university students.

Jasenko Hadzic · Answer

For all the events that students are collaboration on. Tame gathers all your event planning in one place and allows the student organisations to improve year by year, instead of losing the knowledge year by year and starting from scratch due to spreadsheet chaos.

Lucas Schmidt · Answer

Try TMetric, this tools will help you to track you productivity

Answer

Most simple project management app.

Pavel Kukhnavets · Answer

No doubt, Hugger looks convenient and useful not only for product managers and business owners but also for students. The service offers a simple interface and friendly functions for planning tasks, priorities and systematization of knowledge.

Answer

Notability is a powerful, yet wonderfully simple note-taking and PDF annotation tool.

You can use Notability daily to take notes, sketch ideas, create checklists, annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback and more. It is available for iPad, iPhone, and Mac to provide the best note-taking experience at school and at home.

Christina Willner · Answer

It's a great task manager for procrastinators (~90% of students) as it's designed to actually help you get things done.

Mihir Kathpalia · Answer

Built by a university student for university students. Minimal effort to plan your day, never forget another appointment and extremely easy to use. Simple, clean and efficient.

Nick Timms · Answer

It's best if you're a Gmail user, to organize everything. Inbox your life.

Eric Karjaluoto · Answer

You can use Officehours as a way to reach your instructors when you’re remote. And, it’s a handy resource for connecting with off-campus and industry mentors.

Sarang Lakare · Answer

If you are looking for a mobile first collaboration tool, then InTouchApp is a great option. You can use it at an individual level to collect notes, etc., or with your friends in a group. Structure the groups the way you need and put any information you need in these groups. Add your friends to these groups and they instantly get access to all the data and take part in discussions.

Corpa · Answer

Creative students use Corpa to redefine studies and projects. Build, integrate, automate and run projects, workflows, tasks, communication, reports, and dashboards in one mobile app.

Sumangal Vinjamuri · Answer

Can replace all of the Kanban boards, personal organizers, et al and also double up as a database, spreadsheet and more. If I was back in college, this is one app that I would've used everyday!

Answer

Awesome way to organize your research (with pdf editing tools) and increase your productivity by saving time grooming your research database and integrations with e.g. MS Word.

Fred Wilson · Answer

1. Fully-featured project management tool with additional perks that are in-built: time tracking, risk assessment, 
    meeting management and team management.
2. Easy to understand interface, with Guided Tour available for navigating your way through each module in the 
    application
3. Absolutely FREE for up to 10 members per work space. Pro Plan is only $2.99 with unlimited features.

Fawad Ansari · Answer

Hey Omar, as the co-founder of nTask, I would highly recommend you give nTask a shot! 
Keeping in mind the financial restraints in contrast to equally towering number of multiple features required to manage daily tasks, nTask is built to provide maximum functionality under a single platform. With nTask:

1. You can view your project schedule in the form of Gantt charts. (otherwise a paid feature on other apps!)
 2. You can even track the time you spend on each task or assignment in form a report 
 3. You can appoint a single assignment to a mass variety of users. 
 4. You can even setup risks & issues that might affect your project completion and then analyze those risks. (how 
     cool is that!)
5.  You can track recurring tasks alongside new tasks.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. You can do all this and much more (particularly integrate your projects with Google, Microsoft, Slack etc) all on a Free account.

Happy nTasking!

Vítor Mourão · Answer

Make notes easy and set then to look like whatever you want, keep then sync on multiple devices (only 2 in the free version), share files, take pictures, record audio, quick search everything you throw in the app. It's wonderful, it's essential.

Shradha · Answer

Great way to store notes