One of the key advantages of having a social network as part of the online learning environment is that students get to have a space that they can call their own. The personal profile area in uSpace is about fostering that ownership and ensuring that each student’s individuality can be expressed.
Personalised space.
Each profile has an Overview page that displays all recent activity in the profile sections. Users also have the option to post status updates in this panel.
The main “About Me” section includes a page editor that users can use to publish information about themselves, such as their interests, hobbies, etc. It’s the same editor used on Ultranet pages, so HTML snippets can be copied into it to create more unique and interesting profile pages.
Profile questions.
Sometimes the fastest way to get to know someone is by asking a few questions. Every uSpace profile includes a personalised questions area where users can post and answer key questions about themselves. It could be about your favourite colour, top 5 movies, or what song you just can’t get out of your head—anything that helps your buddies get to know you just a bit better.
Question templates can also be created by administrators and published to specified groups of users. So if a user is a member of that group, they will see a new set of questions allocated to them on their profile. Schools can use this in many ways, such as publishing goal setting questions to all students, or basic ‘getting to know you’ questions to help new students familiarise themselves with each other in a new class.