We are working Computing with CSD to develop an integrated sign-in for Kritikos. At present, it is necessary to redirect users to the University Student Portal in order for them to sign in and perform an initial search from there. In future they will be able to sign in directly from the Kritikos site. We’re sure this will improve the overall experience for Kritikos users.
We are getting ready to “soft launch” Kritikos for all our Engineering students at the University of Liverpool. This demonstrates how they will access Kritikos via the student portal at University of Liverpool. All engineering student at University of Liverpool will have eventually have the Kritikos ‘widget’ pre-installed, so they’ll have access to it as soon as they log in.
Kritikos widget on the student portal at the University of Liverpool
When an user types a search term into the search box in the widget they will be taken to the main Kritikos search page, shown below, with all the results relevant to the particular search term. A user can select the resource type, and the page will display Any resource which already has data associated with it in the Learning Registry is clearly marked by the LR icon at the top-right.
Kritikos search results for Flash movies on tensile testing
Clicking on a thumbnail takes the user to the resource detail page. This provides a mini representation of the resource, and if it is interactive, the user can enjoy the full functionality of it without going to the host page. This is the page where all data associated with an individual resource is displayed. The user can also interact with the resourse, e.g. leave a comment, reccommend it, or assign it as relevant/not relevant to a particular module of study. A user can also add the resource to his/her favourites list. They can also ‘vote’ on the activity of other users by clicking on the thumbs up/thumbs down icons.
Kritikos resource details page
Paul Hagan and Simon Hatton from our Computing Services Department have been a huge help in finalizing the current view of the Kritikos widget and the site itself. Thank you guys!
Thank you to students Zofia and Lucas for coming in this afternoon to help us finalise some of the site design and functionality.
Both students reacted positively to the proposed re-branding to Kritikos. There was plenty of discussion about the name, the logo design and colours, but quite a strong consent to retain what has currently been produced.
We’re currently developing the code designed to prevent users from, accidentally or otherwise:
For example, if a student recommends a resource (URL) for a particular module, we should prevent them from doing it a second time. Likewise, we want to avoid the possibility of users voting for the same activity more than once (presumably with the intent of increasing the ranking of a resource or of another user). Similarly, we want to prevent users from upvoting any of their own activities (again with the intent of raising their own user ranking)
In looking for a suitable brand/identity for our visual media search engine, we’re looking for something that might encapsulate the following three concepts:
Note that since we see a future well beyond the scope of Engineering, we’re not looking to incorporate the subject into the new identity.
Eureka provides an obvious, if well-trodden, starting point. Famously uttered by Archimedes, it is the Ancient Greek for “I’ve found it”. This clearly hits the “finding” button, and the use of Greek language, coupled with the Archimedes story, offers the academic clue for “learning”. Sharing isn’t obvious though. The major problem with Eureka is that it has been so widely used in the past, and therefore could easily become confused with other projects, brands, websites, etc.
Staying in the classical world, Invenimus is the Latin equivalent to the Greek Eureka. It too has the potential advantage of sounding learned, but is far less widely used than Eureka, so making it easier for us to build up a unique brand. Four syllables might be considered a disadvantage; two or three syllables often trip off the tongue better. There are other possible verb conjugations; “inveniet” is the future tense – “i/we will find”, but they are all 4-syllables. Here’s a possible design:
The logo is taken directly from the Open Share icon, which may well constitute fair use for our project, if we are openly sharing paradata, etc. The colours are those of the Learning Registry logo; we can discuss whether this is a good idea or not, both on legal and design grounds.
Returning to Greece, kritikos means “able to discern or judge”, which also seems very appropriate. The English word ‘critical’ can have negative connotations, though perhaps in an academic context it might be seen as a positive attribute. Kritikos also allows us to play with some Greek letters, small kappa, iota, omicron, tau and even the trailing sigma all work whilst retain readability. Swapping the ‘r’ for rho would probably be a step to far.
Possible idea for the kritikos design, this time on a black field, showing that the colour scheme is at least versatile. The 'eye' of the logo relates to 'finding', The 'sharing' element though is subtle at best, non-existant at worst, but it could be worked up to make the arrows more prominent.
Other suggestions include:
Comments and suggestions welcome.
An updated version of the kritikos design, with the outline of the eye stylised as arrows (=sharing) and the pupil as a target (=searching/finding). Arrows also separate the finding > learning > sharing.
We’ve been looking at the best way to implement upvote/downvote functionality in our website. The purpose of this is to enable users to endorse or disagree with other users’ activities, thereby introducing a level of self-regulation or democratisation. It also allows users to earn credibility or trustworthiness, which can then be used in the algorithm used to rank search results, and also incentivise students to interact positively with the ENGrich service.
Although some social media sites such as Facebook only support the positive like, our initial position is that we should allow (identifiable) users to give negative votes for activities they do not agree with. We shall review this position with our student group once we have gathered and analysed sufficient activity data.
The paradata statement we propose publishing into Learning Registry will take the following form. Note that the object of the paradata statement is the URL of a page describing the first user’s activity (e.g. comment, recommendation), not the URL of the actual resource itself.
{
"doc_type": "resource_data",
"doc_version": "0.50.0",
"resource_data_type": "paradata",
"active": true,
"identity": {
"owner": "AN Other",
"curator": "",
"submitter_type": "agent",
"submitter": "ENGrich",
"signer": ""
},
"digital_signature": "",
"resource_locator": "http://engrich.liv.ac.uk/rd3/?doc_id=78396f82b6984512ab5c3d5dab8e0b17",
"payload_placement": "inline",
"payload_schema": "LR Paradata 1.0",
"resource_data": {
"activity": {
"actor": {
"objectType": "student",
"displayName": " Student Name",
"description": [
"University",
"Engineering",
"University of Liverpool",
"3rd year",
"Aerospace Engineering with Pilot Studies",
"MEng(Hons)"
]
},
"verb": {
"action": "upvote",
"context": "ENGrich website",
"date": "2012-06-28"
},
"object": {
"id": "http://engrich.liv.ac.uk/rd3/?doc_id=78396f82b6984512ab5c3d5dab8e0b17"
},
"content": "This resource was upvoted on the ENGrich website by a 3rd year student reading Aerospace Engineering with Pilot Studies MEng (Hons) at the University of Liverpool on June28, 2012."
}
}
}
Some quick jottings from today’s road-test for the next things we need to be doing on the technical front:
This is primary engine of the ENGrich site, using Google Custom Search and overlaying data from LR
This provides metadata and paradata on an individual resource. Also allows verified users to submit paradata in the form of comments, module alignment and recommendations, likes/dislikes, etc.
This is the page where you can browse resources already in the Learning Registry by module or by user (i.e. the person who submitted data). Other browse categories might be added in future.
Thanks to all the students who came along to road-test the first alpha test version of the ENGrich visual media search engine. We’ve got lots of notes and video to go through and analyse, but we were pleased to see how well it appeared to go down.
Prototype iLIKE widget in Student Portal
ENGrich search results
ENGrich resource details page
Thanks also to Simon Hatton and Paul Hagan in Computing Services for the work they’ve put in this week and to Phil Barker from CETIS for coming down from Edinburgh.
Following on from earlier work on the iLIKE widget that allows students to view relevant resources by module, we have met again with Simon from Computing Services to outline the functionality of a general search box. We hope to have this ready to try out by the end of this week.
This week we’re working on the functionality and UI of the resource detail page. As well as reading out and displaying relevant data from Learning Registry, we are also adding UI controls to allow Liverpool Engineering students to add their own paradata about the resource. The first set of trials with students will take place on Friday 30 November.