Shared Drives are a convenient way to share files and project folders between Google accounts. The Miami community uses this Google service to share documents in student organizations, within and between departments, and more.
The advantage lies in having a single place to store documents and files; instead of those files being tied to a single member of the community, the files are "owned" by Miami (in Google Drive, this ownership appears as "GoogleApps@MiamiOH"). In this way, when members leave Miami, those files are preserved. This is an important part of our business continuity strategy.
Shared Drives are limited to faculty and staff
The Shared Drive service is limited to faculty and staff. They may invite students to participate in those drives. Faculty advisors for student organizations may create a Shared Drive for their charges.
Students continue to collaborate
Even though students are not able to create Shared Drives, the strong culture of collaboration and sharing continues. All Miami community members are able to share files created and stored in their My Drive (personal Google space).
Students are still able to share files out of their My Drives and collaborate out of Shared Drives that have been shared with them.
Why can't students create Shared Drives?
We implemented this policy to eliminate orphaned data created as students leave Miami. In the past, as students created Shared Drives and then matriculated away from Miami, their Google accounts would be deleted, effectively abandoning those Shared Drives (hence the "orphaned" descriptor). Before we implemented this policy, this left a fair amount of unattended data in our domain. Removing the Shared Drive service from student use has effectively resolved this issue for current and future generations of graduated students.
Shared Drive Storage Quotas
For Faculty and Staff members, upon creation, Shared Drives will have a quota of 100GB. Upon request, higher quotas may be available. Please request a quota increase via the provided form: Request / Google Shared Drive Storage Increase.
