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Need for Support & Support Offer Notification

1 Requirements

It should be possible for students to notify others about their need for support resp. offer for support concerning specific learning demands.
 
For example Lilly Learner is desperate to find someone who can support her in getting along with literature research and management while Peter Publisher knows everything about this matter. The goal of the new feature is to match Lilly and Peter.
 
We see the following possibility to do this:
Lilly and Peter should either find a field in their Personal Profile or a tab in their ePortfolio to announce their support offers and needs for support. The first option would make it easier to fill in the dates because the profile ist standardly accessible, the latter would offer more poosibilities to regulate the sharing options.
 
In every case a specific search option should be implemented that allows the search within the offers and needs. Further on it should be possible to define standard tags, e.g. "literature management", "algebra" or "botany" which can be used and created by students to define their needs and offers and to search for fellow students with this tags.
 
Potentially this feature could on the long run integrate with the planned developments off the DOD NL and the feature skill matrix. This features could serve an automatical analysis of learning needs and srength in specific learning fields to let the sudents know in which fields they need resp. can offer support.

1.1 JF 27 May 2013

We would like to make the feature more concrete:
 
We add three new multi value text fields to the profile under a section "Interests"

• General Interests
• Offering Help
• Looking for Help

An auto-complete function would suggest entries from the competence management system, if terms match.
 
We would like to be able to search by interests and also to browse interests / the competence hierarchy.
 
We have to decide where to place the "search" and/or "browse for user" feature. There are two related feature request: Search for Personal Profiles and buddy system, and Searchable Extended Profiles with subtabs and drop-down menus.
 
A main open issue is: Where to place the access to a user search/browse feature?

• Within the existing search feature
• As a new main menu entry "Users" (or similar)
• In a box on the personal desktop
• Within a new "My Buddies" entry as a new item in the personal desktop drop down.

Any ideas are appreciated.

1.2 JF 17 Feb 2014

The new fields should be supported in the following features:

• Administration > User > Edit (required)
• Adminstration > User List
• Administration > User List (filter)
• Administration > User > Import/Export (required)
• Registration (required)
• Personal Desktop > Personal Data (required)
• Personal Desktop > Public Profile (required)
• Categories > Local User Administration (required)
• Org Units > Local User Adminstration (required)
• Course/Group Member List (selectable columns)
• Course/Group Member Export (Excel/CSV)
• Learning Progress User Lists (selectable columns)
• Certificates (placeholders)
• New Account Mail (placholders)
• Mail (placeholders)
• User Search (global) (required)
• User Search (add member to groups, courses, tests, exercises, ...)
• LDAP/Shibboleth Mapping

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Release 5.0
• Funding: at least Partly funded by BMBF project optes / Technische Hochschule OWL
• Development: Feature is to be developed by tbd

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: André Mersch

4 Discussion

JF 27 May 2013: We appreciate the feature and schedule it for 4.4 under the condition that we find an agreement on the "location" issue.

JF 5 Aug 2013: This scenario will be based on the Search for Personal Profiles implementation in a first step for 4.4.

JF 17 Feb 2014: We decided which new fields should be supported on which screen (see above chap. 1.2) and discussed a General Revision of User Standard Fields.

Matthias Kunkel, 03 Feb 2015: Just a request for a small but important modification: The section "Interests" on the "Personal Data" screen with the three new input fields "General Interests", "Offering Help" and "Looking for Help" should be moved up and placed before section "Contact Informations" because:

1. The feature would be more visible and perceived (and our intention is to support interaction between users with this feature)
2. At the current place between "Contact Information" and "Instant Messengers" it is splitting two contact related sections. It is better to keep them together.

Last remark concerning new installations (only): When you setup a new client and use the default settings from the installation, this new section is enabled as well as the much older input field "Interests/Hobbies" (and "How did you hear about ILIAS?"). I strongly recommend to disable/hide both fields per default (in User Administration » Settings » Custom Fields) to avoid confusion. Users would not know where to add their interests - and only the new field is supported. For existing installations, this has to be done manually by an administrator - unfortunately...

5 Implementation

JL 25 Feb 2014: 3 new user fields (General Interests, Looking For Help, Offering Help) are available in the forms/screens defined above by the Jour Fixe (17 Feb 2014). The global user search will be implemented later.