Forum OpenACS Q&A: Idea for new openacs.org section

I've been thinking that one thing that will really help to showcase and promote oacs is to show how web sites that are live and built with oacs, have used oacs to solve business issues. Above and beyond the usual diatribe that one finds in some articles, why not have a section called something like OACS Site of the Week/Month or whatever. Then the developer/s who built the site and the business people etc. can describe in depth their particular needs and how oacs assisted them in resolving their particular issues. The idea would be to showcase different angles - technical as well as business, community etc. and how oacs delivered in addressing SPECIFIC concerns for that site. Also a focus on ideas, modifications to oacs and other technical details and why the developers etc. chose to do things in that specific way would be quite nice.

Over time, this could become a nice repository of information and real life applications of oacs. It could also serve as a fount of ideas as to how people have solved specific problems using OACS as well as a good source of promotional material.

What better ads for oacs and source of ideas and information on applying oacs, than the sites that have chosen to build their web presence using oacs?

What does the community think about this?

This is a great idea.

I just added the ability to upload HTML content into the ETP package on this site, so we can setup an ETP section, or just upload your case studies into file storage. There is already a folder for marketing materials: https://openacs.org/storage/index?folder_id=95336&n_past_days=99999

Then we can just setup a page of links to the file storage items.

That way any registered user can upload a case study.

My suggestion is that Randy, or whoever wants to coordinate this, should collect a few before opening up the section.  It wouldn't look good if the section was opened and then stood empty, or nearly empty... it would look like no-one is doing anything interesting, when the reality is just the opposite, most of us are too busy doing interesting things to write them down! :)

Hi Lars - Yeah, Reuven would be a perfect choice for writer, I won't pretend to pass myself off as a writer, but I'm willing to give it a shot. If Reuven can act as editor and help correct/spruce up the text it would be nice as well. 😉 One thing that has to happen in order for this to take-off is that a place to live for the section exists on openacs.org. I love Dave's idea (thanks for setting this up btw) and can serve to link more detailed documents on specific aspects of building a site into the section's article.

What I'm thinking is to create a nice write-up for each site and that can have links to supporting documentation that goes into as much detail as the site developers, users etc. want to provide. Sort of like an executive summary but a bit longer that someone can grab and digest quickly. Then they can go and read the details in the tech dev documents or use cases or whatever else has been provided.

I'll be happy to pursue and "coerce" current OACS users into cooperating. Now - Lars, when are you and your staff available for an interview? 😊

Hi Janine - Yes, time is always the big issue, but that's where Lars suggestion of an interview then write-up approach comes in. I think it would help the process. I will soon have a bit more time on my hands and can certainly set aside a few hours on the weekend to do this. The start is the hardest part of course. I appreciate any and all suggestions. So far, it looks like most like this idea. So, who do I contact to create a section on oacs.org.? I agree that we need a few stories before launch. So if the gatekeepers etc, agree that this is something that is desired and space will be made available on oacs.org, then I'll start persuing current oacs users.

Yeah, as Lars mentioned, Rafael and I have been collecting case studies from different learning institutions that use .LRN. The way we go about it is basically contact them (usually thru the OACS/.LRN developers that work with them) and ask them whether they will be willing to participate. We also send them a case study so they get a sense of what we are looking for.

If they are cool with it, then we send them 10 questions that we have. They are very concise and to the point questions... actually, here you have some of them:

1. What where you using before for e-learning?
2. Why did you change?
3. Was the idea of using Open Source part of the reason? Please explain.
4. How many students are using it?
5. For how many courses?
6. What are the plans for the near future?  (i.e. standards compliance, integration, etc?)
7. What are the longer term plans?
8. What is the platform you are currently using for .LRN (hardware and software)?

We usually get very good answers from those, then we add a bit of an intro (based on the 'About Us' section of their site) and we put their answers into an essay format.

Once we have it almost done, we run it thru them for approval, work a bit with them on the rough edges and then we put them online... It really doesn't take to long and we have always done it over email, so it's cool for them and we don't pester them much 😉

Anyway, here you the link to the case studies:

http://dotlrn.org/users/cases

Please let me know if there's anything you need help with.

Ernie