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Scholar

Scholar is Blackboard's social bookmarking tool. It is integrated with FerrisConnect, which means that as an instructor you can add the Scholar tool to your course. Once you (or your students) have created an account in Scholar, you can log into it directly at scholar.com or through FerrisConnect.

 

What is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a system in which users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. Many social bookmarking systems encourage users to use tags to organize their bookmarks. Tags let you view bookmarks associated with a chosen tag (i.e. instructional technology, wikis), and Scholar, like other social bookmarking services, also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Why use Scholar?

Scholar is a nice option for social bookmarking because it is used by Blackboard users, and therefore tends to be educational by nature. There are other social bookmarking sites (i.e. del.icio.us (who founded tagging), ma.gnolia.com, furl.net, and simpy.com among others); however, those sites are open to the world.

Scholar allows you to store your links in a location you can access anywhere, anytime. Scholar also allows you to classify your links through the use of tags, and share your links.

How to use Scholar in a class?

With Scholar you can:

1. provide a way for students to save links while in the process of researching a project.
2. share links with your students
3. provide a means for students to share links with each other
4. create a common resource page for your class which can be easily added to

How to Create Your Scholar Account

• Log into FerrisConnect.
• Click on the MyBlackboard link in the upper right hand corner.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and under External Links, click on Scholar Home.
• Fill out the form and you are go to go! You now have access to Scholar.com for personal use.
• If you want to collaboratively bookmark in a course, or easily share your bookmarks with a course, you will want to add a scholar course homepage to your FerrisConnect course. In order for your students to access and use the Scholar course homepage, they will have to register for an account as well; however, the first time they click on the Scholar link in your course, they will be propmted to create an account by filling out the same form you just did. After that, each the students will go directly to the Scholar course page when they click on the link.

How to Add a Scholar Course Homepage to a FerrisConnect Course

• On the Build Tab, click on Add Content Link > Create Scholar Course Home.
• You will see this screen, enter a title for your course, and click Save.

• Click on the Action Link next to the new Scholar icon, and click Preview.

• You will be prompted to continue registering your course in a new window.

• Choose a discipline from the drop down menu, and click Register.
• Note: This is one item you cannot check using the Student View.
• When you click on the link to Scholar, you will be automatically logged in and sent to the course page for this course.
• Once you have a scholar account, you can also log in to your account to view and add bookmarks by going directly to the site scholar.com.

Last modified: 11/08/2011