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Viewing Connexions Content

Module by: Connexions, Mark Husband. E-mail the authors

Summary: A description of how to view courses and modules in Connexions.

Note:

Each piece of content has two major components available for viewing: the actual content itself, and the metadata page, containing information about the content, author, and more. When you first browse to a module or collection, you will be taken to the content page. To see the metadata, select the metadata link at the bottom of the page. Metadata are non-content information about a module, such as the module ID, license type, version number, creation date, revision date, authors, maintainers, copyright holders, module name, keywords, and abstract.

All Connexions content is located in the content repository, which can always be navigated to by clicking the Content tab at the top of the page. To allow you to easily access other parts of Connexions while viewing content (e.g. your MyCNX page or our Help documentation) the blue Connexions logo will always be located above the content you are viewing, including many of the links also on the home page.

What's in this module?

This module first describes the basic layout of the "Viewing Content" pages. There are additional features added to the page when you are viewing content in the context of a collection or a lens. Those extra features are described in the second and third sections of this module.

Jump to:

Basic Layout

The components of the content viewing page include:

Content Action Bar

The Content Action bar is a white horizontal bar above the module or collection title that includes a series of dropdown menus. All actions in the Content Action bar are also available as plain hyperlinks in the footer of the page.

Figure 1: Content Action bar with the "Downloads" dropdown shown.
Downloads dropdown in the content action bar

Add to My Favorites

The Add to my favorites dropdown allows you to quickly add content to your My Favorites lens. In addition to bookmarking content of personal interest, the My Favorites lens also allows readers to start reading from where they last left off within a bookmarked collection.

Add to a Lens

The Add to a lens dropdown allows you to quickly add content to a lens you own.

Reuse/Edit

The Reuse/Edit dropdown menu allows you to quickly checkout the content to a Work Area (if you have permissions to edit the content) or derive a copy of the content to create an adaptation(if you don't have permissions).

Download

The Downloads dropdown menu allows you to quickly access PDF and EPUB versions of the module and/or collection. The link to More downloads... will take you to all available downloads for the content on its metadata page.

Print this Page

Click the Print this page button to print a printer-friendly version of the HTML page.

Content title bar

Title, Author, and Summary

The content title bar displays the title, author(s), and summary provided by the author(s) for the content. More detailed metadata is on the Metadata page, which you can access through a link in the footer of the page.

Figure 2: Content title bar.
Content title bar.

Facebook and Twitter

Connexions has rolled out Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" buttons on all of our content. If you are reading a module or collection that you like, you can like or tweet it directly from that page.

Note:

Facebook gives much less feedback than Twitter. You won't see a confirmation message after clicking "like", but it will show up on Facebook wall nonetheless.
Figure 3: Twitter and Facebook buttons in the content title bar.
Facebook and Twitter buttons.

Buttons exist in the content title bar at the upper right corner the page, and also down at the bottom in the footer. To like an entire collection of modules, go back to the START page of the collection by clicking the collection title. The description at the bottom of the page will say "Share collection" instead of "Share module", as it does on the module pages.

Figure 4: Twitter and Facebook buttons in the footer.
(a)
Facebook and Twitter buttons.
(b)
Facebook and Twitter buttons.

The Facebook and Twitter buttons give direct feedback to authors by letting them see instantly how many people have liked or tweeted their content.

Sidebar Portlets

Related Material

You can view content related to the content you are displaying using the links in the Related Material portlet that appears on the left side of the page. The links inside this box are specific to the content you are viewing at the time.

Figure 6: Links to related material
Figure 6 (/content/m19610/latest/module-view-related.png)

Included in the portlet are:

  • "Similar content": a list of similar content generated by the Rhaptos platform underlying Connexions. Click a title to display that content. Browsing the content listed here is a great way to find similar learning materials on a related subject.
  • "Collections using this material": lists any other collections that contain the current module. (This header only appears if you are viewing a module which is included in at least one collection.) You can click on the names of the listed collections to be taken to the start page of that collection.

Recently Viewed

Unless this is your first time viewing Connexions content on this computer or under this account, the Recently Viewed portlet will be populated with modules, collections, and lenses you have recently browsed, so that you can easily jump back to them. This portlet can be collapsed by clicking on the triangle next to the title of the portlet.

Figure 7: "Recently Viewed" portlet.
Recently Viewed.

Lenses

If the content you are viewing is included in any public lenses, then the "Lenses" portlet will appear on the left side of the page. This portlet lists all the various lenses which include the content being viewed.

Figure 8: Display lens information in a popup.
Lenses portlet

Hover over the name of a lens to see more information about it, including who created it, and the comment (if any) they wrote in their lens about the content. Clicking on the name of a lens will take you to the lens page with the full list of content included in the lens.

Clicking on the tag item next to any of the lens names in the Lenses portlet will expand the portlet to show all the tags the lens creator has associated with this piece of content.

Figure 9: Expand tags in the "Lenses" portlet.
Lenses portlet

Click one of these tags to view all other content within this lens associated with this tag. The link will take you to a view of the lens page with results filtered to show only the content associated with this tag.

Tags

If the content you are viewing is included in any public lenses, then you will also see a Tags portlet on the left side of the page. This portlet lists a combination of all of the tags associated with this content from all the lenses it is included in.

Figure 10: Tags portlet.
Tags portlet

Click on a tag here to see a listing of all the content in the Connexions repository that is included in a lens and has this tag associated with it. Note: Because only content contained in a lens can have a tag associated with it, this only finds content that an individual or organization has highlighted with this tag in a lens.

Lens Context

How is a lens context set?

When you first land on a lens page, your browser saves a cookie that lets it know you are viewing that lens. After that, whenever you view a module or collection that is included in the lens, you will view that content in the context of the lens, explained below. This is true until you land on a different lens's start page, at which point your browser will only display lens context information for content that is in that second lens. Even if a module or collection is actually included in 50 different lens by different creators, your browser will only show it in the context of the lens you are viewing. Note: To view lenses correctly, make sure that you have enabled cookies in your browser.

Figure 16: Lens context when viewing content.
Lens branding bar.

Lens logo

The logo or image uploaded by the lens creator will appear above the Table of Contents on the left side of the page, to remind you that you are viewing content within that lens.

Branding bar

Additionally, just underneath the breadcrumbs at the top of the page, you will see a colored bar associated with the lens which will print the lens name. Click the name of the lens to return to the lens page.

Collection Navigation

Content actions

Download module as:

PDF | EPUB (?)

What is an EPUB file?

EPUB is an electronic book format that can be read on a variety of mobile devices.

Downloading to a reading device

For detailed instructions on how to download this content's EPUB to your specific device, click the "(?)" link.

| More downloads ...

Add:

Collection to:

My Favorites (?)

'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need an account to use 'My Favorites'.

| A lens I own (?)

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

| External bookmarks

Module to:

My Favorites (?)

'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need an account to use 'My Favorites'.

| A lens I own (?)

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

| External bookmarks