Welcome to interChange
What is the interChange:
In summary the Interchange web application was developed primarily for people to share knowledge through the use of web 2.0 paradigms and social networking.
You will be able to find resources, contribute content and collaborate with others.
The website can be open to all to view content but may require users top register before a contribution is allowed.
What can I find?
You can find:
- People with similar interests
- Resources related to a particular topic. These resources can be either directly contributed by others to the website or harvested from other sources
- Groups and communities of practice that have been established on the website.
What content can I contribute?
Books and pages
- A book is a dynamic, collaborative, online document. It consists of book pages (web pages) that have the following hierarchical structure
- A top level from which all book pages branch off
- Parent pages with child pages
- Parent pages with child pages
- An event is a planned event with a start and end date, and displays in the events calendar.
- A blog is a regularly updated journal or diary made up of individual posts shown in reversed chronological order. Each member of the site may create and maintain a blog.
- A weblink is a link to an external site.
- A poll consists of multiple choice questions that users can answer.
- You can upload a previously prepared file to the website.
- An article is information that is relevant for a specific period of time, for example, announcements, notices and news articles.
Calendar event
Blog entry
Weblink
Poll
Upload file
Article
Vocabularies and tags
You can classify the content that you create through:
Vocabularies – a fixed classification system of vocabularies that contain pre‑defined categories.
Free tags – a user-generated classification system that allows you to tag content with terms that describe your content.
Categories and tags organise content on the website, and make it easy for you to navigate to related information. When you view contributed content, the categories and tags used to classify the content are displayed as links. Clicking on a link displays all content classified with the same categories or tags.
How can I collaborate?
You can collaborate with colleagues through the following means:
Comment, rate and bookmark resources
Contribute your knowledge to position papers and other documents
Form communities of practice with like-minded colleagues around topical issues
Set up your personal profile so other people can engage with your expertise and knowledge
Find colleagues with similar interests
Groups
A group is an online network of registered website users who have a shared interest in a particular facet.
You can do the following in a group:
Contribute resources to the group. Work on an idea by yourself or in partnership with other group members through a wiki and then share the resource within the group.
Enter an online forum and participate in the discussion threads, create a discussion topic or just read what other members are discussing.
Inform other members about what is happening in your area.
Share ideas.
Seek out others who can share useful information, ideas and resources.
Use a group as an online project workspace.
Any logged in user can create a new group. If you create a group, you become its owner and you are automatically added as the first member. As the group owner, you can manage your group. You can decide who can see that your group exists and how users become members of your group. There are four types of groups, these are:
Open membership
An open group has unrestricted membership. Any logged in user can join an open group by clicking the subscribe button next to the group’s name in the group directory
Moderated membership
Moderated membership is useful if you want to monitor who joins the group.
If users want to join your moderated group, they must send you an automated request to join the group. You can accept or decline the request.
Users cannot enter the group or see any of its content until they have been granted membership.
Invitation-only membership
Invitation-only membership is useful if your group is selective. To join your invitation-only group, you or any other group member must invite users to join.
Closed membership
Closed membership is useful if you want to restrict membership of your group.
Users cannot subscribe or be invited to join a closed group. If users want to join your closed group, they should contact you.
User Space
The website lets you have your own space where you can see all of your interactions with the website. From here users can access their content and the content of their colleagues very quickly.
Searching for Resources
Within the website you can search for People, Groups or Resources that have been either contributed directly or harvested from repositories. You are also able to search for resources from other external sites by using the website.
RSS Feeds
RSS stands for really simple syndication. RSS makes information available to you without you having to visit particular website pages or other websites.
When new content is posted on the website or a change is made to an external web page, an RSS reader keeps track of these changes and delivers them to you as feeds. A feed is a collection of the latest items of information.
RSS feeds can be either external or internal.
Help
Extensive online help can be provided to assist members to utilise the website to its fullest extent.