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Lenses

What is a lens?

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.

This content is ...

Affiliated with (What does "Affiliated with" mean?)

This content is either by members of the organizations listed or about topics related to the organizations listed. Click each link to see a list of all content affiliated with the organization.
  • CNX Documentation display tagshide tags

    This collection is included inLens: Connexions Documentation
    By: Connexions

    Comments:

    "The canonical how-to guide to using Connexions."

    Click the "CNX Documentation" link to see all content affiliated with them.

    Click the tag icon tag icon to display tags associated with this content.

  • JVLA Affiliated display tagshide tags

    This collection is included inLens: Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy Affiliated Material
    By: Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy

    Click the "JVLA Affiliated" link to see all content affiliated with them.

    Click the tag icon tag icon to display tags associated with this content.

Also in these lenses

  • OER/LOR Connexions T display tagshide tags

    This collection is included inLens: OER/LOR Connexions Training
    By: Connexions

    Comments:

    "This collection has the basic training for authoring modules (chapters/sections) and collections (textbooks/courses etc)."

    Click the "OER/LOR Connexions T" link to see all content selected in this lens.

    Click the tag icon tag icon to display tags associated with this content.

Recently Viewed

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Tags

(What is a tag?)

These tags come from the endorsement, affiliation, and other lenses that include this content.
 

Lenses

Module by: Connexions. E-mail the author

Summary: This module describes what a Lens on Connexions is, how authors may use them to highlight certain content, and how instructors or learners may use them to find quality content.

What is a lens?

Lenses enable both organizations and individuals to give their stamps of approval to content in the repository, allowing for user-driven quality control of modules and collections. Through these lenses, users can provide their own tags and comments for items in the repository. Lenses can also be used as "bookmarks" within the repository to keep track of related or otherwise interesting content.

A list of all publicly-viewable lenses can be found at under the Lenses tab. Lenses are available in four different forms:

  • Endorsement Lenses - Organizations, such as professional societies, can create endorsement lenses containing content they have carefully reviewed and deem to be of high quality. Organizations use their own criteria for endorsement and are encouraged to describe their selection process on the lens home page.
  • Affiliation Lenses - Organizations can also create affiliation lenses identifying content created by members of that organization (but not necessarily reviewed). Though not as rigorous as an endorsement lens, content in an affiliation lens is assumed to be of a quality on par with other members of that organization.
  • My Favorites Lens - Each user account has a private My Favorites lens which can be used to keep track of a user's favorite modules and collections. 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. You can access your personal My Favorites lens by selecting the MyCNX tab and clicking on the My Favorites link (login required).
  • Member Lists - An account holder can create member list lenses to organize related content, such as to keep track of referenced source materials or to use as a course reading list for students.

All lenses except for the My Favorites lens can either be made privately viewable for personal use only or publicly viewable for anyone to see. The My Favorites lens is always private.

Using lenses

Clicking on the name of a lens will take you to its lens page, which includes information about the lens (and the organization, if the lens was created by an organization), a listing of all the content within that lens, and a tags portlet on the left side of the page.

Figure 1: Lens page for an individual's lens.
Example of an organizational lens page.

Notice the content selected by this lens is displayed like the results of a search. This is useful, because you have access to all the sorting, filtering, and pagination options for any search return listing on Connexions. The "Detail" view will display the lens creator's comments for each of the selected content.

Tags

Lens owners can provide a set of one-word tags for content added to a lens as well as comments about the content. These allow lens users to learn more about why the lens owner chose to add this content to the lens; however, these are not to be confused with keywords and summaries, which are provided by the author of the module or collection.

The Tags portlet displays a cloud of the tags used within this lens, with each tag sized relative to the number of times it is used. Click on a tag in the Tags portlet to filter the lens page to only show content associated with that tag. Tags here have a lens-wide scope, as opposed to the Tags portlet on the "Viewing Content" page, which will search the repository for all content in all lenses associated with this tag.

Figure 2: Tags portlet on the lens page.
Tags portlet.

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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