WEBSITE NEWS
Profile Pages and Electronic Posters:
Tools for Making our Work Visible
through the VKP Website
Two useful tools have enhanced the VKP website
this summer: the personal and campus profile pages and the electronic
poster tools. Developed by the VKP team, including the involvement of
Cold Fusion Maven Daniel Levine and Senior Web Applications Developer
Bill Garr, the tools provide the opportunity for VKP members to upload
and edit their own content on the VKP website. Using these tools, VKP
participants can easily create attractive HTML pages, presenting their
campuses and ongoing scholarship of teaching and learning projects, without
knowing a bit of HTML code. More importantly, the tools provide new spaces
for collaboration. Participants can use the posters and the profile pages
to connect with colleagues who are exploring similar questions.
 Campus
coordinators can create "campus profile" pages, which introduce
the public and other VKP members to a core campus group and its activities.
These pages include a list of all participants from a campus group (with
links to individual profile pages), descriptions of the group's key themes
and interests, and links to online documents and websites. Coordinators
may also add images and photos to enhance their campus pages. The figure
above shows part of the Youngstown State University campus profile page,
including a photo from the campus and some key themes of their group.
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 VKP
participants can create "participant profile" pages which introduce
themselves and their work to the public and other VKP members. The personal
profile page contains some biographical information about the VKP member,
a list of the key themes in his/her VKP research project, a brief description
of the project, a photo, and a variety of links. The links can point to
the participant's electronic poster, to downloadable files that the participant
has placed on the VKP server, or to external sites. Above you can see
part of Wyn Kelley's page, with a photograph, a list of the key themes
in her project, and a short biography.
 One
of the most exciting tools among the new suite enables primary researchers
to present their upcoming or ongoing scholarship of teaching and learning
projects. To do this, we have created an "electronic poster tool."
Borrowing a concept from the poster sessions common in the sciences and
social sciences, in which researchers briefly--but comprehensively--present
their ongoing work in a paper poster, we have created a tool which enables
VKP participants to create online, electronic posters. Above you can see
a part of the "Journeys Far From Home" poster created by Betsi
Stephen, who has used images, lists and links to present her project.
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 A
typical poster contains:
• Title and abstract of the project;
• Text boxes, for a description of a project, the approach, the course
context, the students, etc.;
• List boxes, for creating bulleted lists to describe goals, key
findings, etc.;
• Image boxes, for displaying course graphics, samples of work, etc.;and
• Links and documents, which may be added to all types of boxes,
for pointing to any web page or to documents that have been uploaded to
the VKP server.
 We
have created two kinds of templates to help guide researchers in choosing
the kinds of content they wish to include on their posters: a project
poster template (for ongoing SoTL projects) and a project planning template
(for upcoming SoTL projects). Both templates include boxes with writing
prompts to guide researchers in presenting their projects. Each of these
boxes is fully editable, and researchers can add or delete boxes and content
of their own choosing.
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To start to get a sense of how profile
pages and posters are being used by VKP campuses and researchers:
 1.
Go to the People and Projects sections of the website at http://crossroads.
georgetown.edu/ vkp/people/, and
2. Click the navigation button for Campuses.
To view VKP participant profile pages:
 From
the Campus pages, select links listed under Local VKP Participants:
or:
 From
the People and Projects sections of the website, click the
navigation button for Researchers.
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To access participant poster pages:
 Select
links listed under VKP Project Posters on eachparticipant's profile page
(We are working on making this link more obvious).
You can also go directly to the Poster List at http://cfdev.georgetown.edu/training/levined2/vkp/posters/
dsp_posterlist.cfm
For more information:
More information on creating and editing poster pages is available in
an online poster guide at http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/
vkp/people/posterguide/. There also is a link to the poster guide
at the top of the poster editing screen.
Logging in:
To begin using any of these tools, please login to the participant workspace
section of the VKP website by clicking on the "workspace" link
anywhere on the VKP site (http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/).
Your username is your email address before the "@" sign (with
no punctuation).
Your password is your first initial and last name.
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