August 2

Folio

Yesterday I did a blog post about Mahara. University of Brighton use Mahara for their StudentFolio. I also have fond memories of using Mahara in Greater Brighton Metropolitan College back when it was City College. I made a group for my class. I was very proud of this. And I made an advice page (which was deleted when they stopped using Mahara but I saved the text in the linked document) for those chosing to stay on and study in Brighton.

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May 8

Students’ Union website features

I meant to do a Students’ Union website review for years. There is so much information on the website that it would take ages to write this post, so I’m just going to write about some of the features you can interact with. The only features I won’t talk about in depth are the administrative side of societies (as I am not an elected member, so I don’t have permissions) and events/calendar (as they seem to be mostly used by societies).

A fellow student mentioned frustrations at the site a couple of years ago. I felt the same at the time, though after spending a few hours navigating the website this week I actually think it’s really well put together. And it gets better year after year. I think there are some features that are incomplete, but I think it’s more to do with lack of usage by members rather than poor design.

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November 24

Yammer

Yammer is my favourite social network. Which, I know is weird because most people don’t use it. Currently, the University of Brighton student Yammer has been accessed by 283 people. I would say that 95% accessed it once and never came back (I know because I log in daily to see if any new activity has taken place).

Here’s why I like it:

Access

yammer.com/uni.brighton.ac.uk

You log in using your usual student credentials. Easy peasy. You can then use an app to follow conversations (Itunes / Windows / Android).

Security
I really like that only people with an email address ending in @uni.brighton.ac.uk can view the student Yammer. (FYI there is a staff Yammer over at yammer.com/brighton.ac.uk). So it is a social network just for University of Brighton students.

Feed
It’s easy to embed on other blogs. But, because it’s only viewable to logged-in students, everyone else sees a blank space or a login screen.


Navigation
The layout is simple and similar to another well-known social network. So, things are where you expect them to be. The home icon takes you to the All company feed. The left-hand bar has an icon that takes you to your inbox and another that shows notifications. Under that you have a list of the groups you’ve joined. In the main body of the page you can post updates (inc. images and videos), tag people, create a topic (by using the hashtag) and post a poll.

Additional
Other features you can use are:

September 17

Delve

Delve looks useful. I don’t know what it is exactly but it’s only viewable to University of Brighton students. I thought it was just a profile page but when I looked for some articles about it I saw that you can see what people you are following are up to. My Delve page is pretty empty – probably due to my friends/classmates not using Sharepoint or OneNote often. The only people who I ever see activity for are members of the Elearning team.

I don’t like the inability to edit the layout of the page – I can change the background image but that’s all. As it currently stands, I would prefer if it was a basic layout like Mysite (more detail below).

I just use it as a profile page, at the moment (because no other content is being recommended to me). If you were to use it like a profile page, you could put all the usual information like contact details, interests, skills and previous projects you worked on.

In the edit page mode you have the option to change your newsfeed settings. This seems like a odd place to have this option.

I think Delve would be more enjoyable to use on an app (I can only see it available to use on iOS and Android). And, from what I’ve read/seen, it appears to get more interesting when you follow other people who use it. I’d love to collaborate with more users. I think it would be great for project work. Now I just need to find like-minded Delve enthusiasts…

More information about Delve is available on the Office website products.office.com/en-us/business/explore-office-delve

Mysite is not aimed at students – so much so, that you cannot even login on the main page. There is only a couple of places and things you can do with it. But it does have it’s uses.

You have a basic profile that you can update. I have a link to my profile in my email signature, the reason I use it is because it is accessible to both staff and students. I update my interests and skills on it. I also use the contacts function because I can add both staff and students.