<html> <head> <title>3. Users and collaborative learning</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p>[LASTREF=E-2-000.html NEXT=E-0-000.html]</p> <h2>3. Users and collaborative learning</h2> <p>One of the menu items leads you to the " Meeting Place". There you find various tools to enhance exchange of information between you and the students and also among the students. As a course administrator you may (again in the file <i>inc/general_vars.inc.php</i>) switch on or off some of the features. </p> <p>In a default installation the activated tools are</p> <ul> <li>An <b>information board</b>, pointing to the file <i>contents/E-noticeboard.html</i>, which you may edit and use for schedules, public announcements and so on. </li> <li>The <b>post office</b>, where students easily send mail to their peers in their respective groups or to other users of the course.</li> <li>A <b>discussion forum</b>, open for everyone with a valid login; it is a good idea to suggest certain topics to be discussed.</li> <li>A <b>filespace</b> " File Depot" for users and groups, where users may dowload and upload their own files (within specified limits); users may exchange files within their working groups and also make available some results of their work for the other course users.</li> <li> A link to a page pointing to the <b>published user contributions</b>. That page is generated on the fly and it links to the index-files in the group- and user-folders. There the individual groups and users may publish files for all users of the course.</li> <li>A <b>public chatroom "Cafè"</b>, open for everyone with a valid login. This allows chats among course users. Experience shows, that it is advisable to arrange certain meeting times and topics for an efficient discussion.</li> </ul> <p>The tools should allow you to support active group collaborations. You could give tasks or suggest projects and the results then could be made publicly available (via the linking mechanism mentioned above) for all the course users. </p> <p>In the lecturer's administration area you will find more tools to administrate the course. Among them are: </p> <ul> <li>Links to the local documentation (and to the <img src="../img/electure_logo.gif" border=0> home).</li> <li>Administration of users, groups and folders, including statistics features.</li> <li>Special-rights entry to the filedepot.</li> <li>Activation and administration of exercises.</li> <li>Management of user contributed notes to contents part.</li> <li>Management of user contributions to the discssion forum and the chatroom.</li> <li>Construction of the data base for the search feature.</li> <li>Information on how to produce lecture notes based on the contents pages.</li> </ul> </body> </html>