Many college and university students do an internship or some sort of part-time job to get work experience related to the degree they’re pursuing — are you one of them? If so, you know it can sometimes be tricky to balance your studies with your work responsibilities. 

One way to make it easier to stay on top of everything is to use productivity and communication platforms that work for both professional and educational purposes. Check out some of our top recommendations below.

Best Communication Platforms for Working and Studying

1. Spike

Do you find yourself constantly switching between your work, student, and personal email accounts to keep track of tasks and find the information you need? Well, Spike can help streamline that for you and get rid of all the clutter and noise, like repetitive subject lines, headers, and email body content.

Spike is a conversational email app that you can use to sync all your different email accounts and view email threads in a chat-like format. This means that you see messages as if they were a bubble-style chat message, and you can respond in the same way, right from within the Spike app. 

Spike is a great communication platform for both working and studying because it also turns your email accounts into a collaborative workspace. Spike lets you create chat groups with coworkers, classmates, or friends, so you can all hash over different projects and tasks. In addition to text-based chatting within your various groups, you can also hold video conferences or send voice messages to help increase your productivity.

Besides the communication features, you can also create collaborative notes and to-do lists in Spike, centralizing all your work and school projects into one easy-to-use hub. With Spike, it’s easy to communicate with everyone you need to and collaborate on all your different school or professional projects.

2. Google Drive

When it comes to file sharing and collaborating on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, Google Drive is an excellent tool for both working and studying. 

For example, if you have a group project for one of your classes, you can put all the assets you need into a shared Google Drive folder that everyone in your group can access. Then, you and your classmates can create a shared Google Slides presentation and divide it up into sections for each group member to tackle.

Or, if you’re doing a research internship in your university’s lab, you can use Google Sheets to compile data and share it with your coworkers or supervisors.

3. Zoom

Do you need to hold regular group study sessions or professional meetings when working from home? Zoom is a great app for connecting with groups of people using video and audio. In some cases, you might even be able to attend some of your classes via a Zoom webinar instead of going in person.

4. WhatsApp

WhatsApp is an incredibly popular mobile communication app that you can use to text, call, or video call for free. For studying or chatting with coworkers, WhatsApp can be more useful than iMessage or SMS because you can create chat groups with your classmates, regardless of what type of mobile device or phone plan they have.

5. Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking app that’s been around since 2008, and it’s just as valuable as ever. The app makes it really easy to take neat, organized notes for either school or work. But, the best thing is that you can share those notes with your colleagues or classmates in just a couple of clicks. Evernote is available for both mobile and desktop, so you can take notes from and share between any device.

6. Asana

If you’re looking for a clean, simple-to-use project management platform to organize your work and school tasks, Asana might be just what you need. Asana allows you to create Kanban-style boards, project calendars, and timelines to manage all your different workflows in a really visual way. It’s especially great if you’re studying/working in marketing, design, and other creative areas.

Our Final Words

When you’re studying and working part-time, you’re constantly running from lectures, labs, and study sessions, to your office or internshipLinks to an external site.. With all those different projects and tasks going on at once, it can be easy for something to slip through the cracks.

That’s where communication platforms come in — by using the right team communication, collaboration, and productivity apps, you can really streamline your studying and working to eliminate unnecessary clutter and ensure you fulfill all your varied responsibilities.

If you know you need to try something new to stay organized and productive but aren’t sure where to start, try out some of the apps and platforms mentioned in this article to find something that works for you!