[QUOTE]What do you guys think of this new online "community"... like it, hate it, indifferent?[/QUOTE]

Re: know what everyone thinks about this \"Virtual Learning Commons\"

[QUOTE]So far, lovin' it. Depends how it goes and how much feedback we get ;) ~cheers.[/QUOTE]

RE: know what everyone thinks about this VLC

[QUOTE]w00t!! This website rocks.[/QUOTE]

Re: w00t!

[QUOTE]This is a pretty cool concept could use some improvements but for it\'ll do. Well my only complain is how all the subjects are randomly thrown onto a page. It does remind me of a fridge or sumtin i dunno lol we\'ll see what happens with this site and how it evolves.[/QUOTE]

Re: What I think.

[QUOTE]You're right the subjects, or to do items, are randomly thrown up on the home page, The size they appear at is determined by how many people have that subject on their list of to do's. If you're looking for something specific you can use the search tool which should find stuff.[/QUOTE]

Re: random links

[QUOTE]To take things a little farther... Do you guys see this site as a helpful resource? ie. to both meet people with similar interests and gain knowledge from those with experience. Or do you think of it more as a creative way to kill some time? Or a combination of both? Let me know![/QUOTE]

Re: To elaborate...

[QUOTE]First, I'm writing as a guy who had something to do with the creation of the vlc. To answer your question, both. It is meant to allow students to connect to each other - to meet people with similar interests - or to discuss issues of common concern. Secondly, it is also meant to provide general resources to help students have success at university. What do you think of the VLC?[/QUOTE]

Re: two purposes

[QUOTE]So far I really like this new site. I think it is a great idea.[/QUOTE]

Re: two purposes

[QUOTE]This website has a good concept and looks useful. However, there are some minor things I don't really like about it: 1) The spelling checker. When I tried using it to check one of my postings it found errors like for example I had written "ot" instead of "to", clearly a misspelling, and it didn't allow me to change it but instead offered a number of suggestions neither of which was correct. Also it underlined as errors things like "I've" which MS Word's spellchecker considers correct. Hence, I personally would rather correct the mistakes by myself after the spellchecker finds them, rather than using the suggestions. 2) I would love to have an option to upload my own avatar in the profile. It may not be uploaded to the server but loaded from an URL or something...Don't you guys thing that using a gallery of avatars somehow limits our creativity? It's true that there are a number of different avatars we can choose from, but still...But well, this is not a forum or a chat, it's aimed to help us in our learning so the avatars are not such a big trouble. Otherwise, the Virtual Learning Commons is excellent. Keep up the good work and continue improving this website.[/QUOTE]

Re: Good Job

[QUOTE]I like the idea of a site dedicated to the U of M students, so thats very good. I dont like the format, I would perfer to have a message board kind of system, maybe in the future this could be implemented?[/QUOTE]

Re: So far good

[QUOTE]Hello People, Thanks for the positive feedback. I'm the programmer who wrote the VLC over the summer. I'd have to agree the spell checker really sucks right now. Currently, it's got a massive dictionary file coded into a binary tree. To find suggestions, it simply grabs the closest nodes in the tree, which really doesn't work. I've got a better version that uses a decent open source spellcheck library, and we're working on getting that library installed on the production server.[/QUOTE]

Re: Good Job

[QUOTE]LOL I say WOOT too :P[/QUOTE]

Re: w00t!

[QUOTE]Yes, please get a new Spelling Checker. This one even left out one of my misspellings. And I also think that it would be nicer if the subjects/to do items were arranged better... At least in columns... (cause we students are sooo organized, it's in our nature:). I like the idea of bigger and smaller print depending on how popular topic is though... In general, you did A GREAT JOB creating this thing!!! There are so many U of M groups on different forums, finally we got something on our own university web site.[/QUOTE]

Re: Nice job!

[QUOTE][QUOTE]Yes, please get a new Spelling Checker. This one even left out one of my misspellings. [/QUOTE] The dictionary that I used has a lot of slang/acronyms in it. Another reason that I'd like to switch it asap.[/QUOTE]

Re: Nice job!

[QUOTE]We are planning on offering a couple of different ways to view the to do list. One would be a sort alphabetically. This would have each to do on a separate line, same text size. Of course, this might lead to people adding to do's like aaaadding a new to do ;-) The other way we are thinking of reorganizing is by offering a list of the top ten (or twenty) to do's based on number of people who are doing that to do plus the number of comments. What do you think? Any other ways that would be helpful?[/QUOTE]

Re: organizing to dos

[QUOTE][QUOTE] What do you think? Any other ways that would be helpful?[/QUOTE] Why don't you just organize them in Categories? Then show a list of categories and in every category the topics sorted by number of people doing them, number of comments or alphabetically as selected by the user using drop-down menu for example. At the page listing the categories you can also put a link like "Top10" or something, giving access to a page where the user can see the top 10 topics based on the selected option (number of users, number of comments).[/QUOTE]

Re: organizing to dos

[QUOTE]Does anyone have professors that give out research assigments like for english that they could let me know their names, office hours and where their office is located. I have an assignment where I have to ask 2 professors about what they look for in research papers but none of my professors that I have give out research papers as assignments. If you know where I could contact other professors that works too. Thanks[/QUOTE]

Re: Finding 2 professors to do my intro to university assignment

[QUOTE][QUOTE][QUOTE] What do you think? Any other ways that would be helpful?[/QUOTE] Why don't you just organize them in Categories? Then show a list of categories and in every category the topics sorted by number of people doing them, number of comments or alphabetically as selected by the user using drop-down menu for example. At the page listing the categories you can also put a link like "Top10" or something, giving access to a page where the user can see the top 10 topics based on the selected option (number of users, number of comments).[/QUOTE] Well, we could list categories, but that does add another level of complexity to the site that may or may not be welcomed. For instance, what kind of categories do we start with? How are new categories created? Do we allow users to put a To-Do into their own category? If so, what do we do about mis-categorized To-Do's? I think in the long run the categories would just make things more complex, but I like the idea of being able to sort by different factors like popularity, number of comments and age. We plan on implementing something like that in the near future. Thank's for your suggestions and I'd like to extend the invitiation to others to make suggestions on what you think the VLC should (or shouldn't) have.[/QUOTE]

Re: organizing to dos

[QUOTE]I just wanted to add one more suggestion: I think it will be quite useful if you add an MSN/ICQ/YahooMessanger field to the profile. It will make it easier to chat with other users in real time and make new friends.[/QUOTE]

Re: one more suggestion

[QUOTE]I just signed up a couple days ago so I'm just kinda browsing and checking things out, but so I far I like it. It's pretty cool and interesting and a lot different from the kinds of things I usually do online ^^ The layout and format is great, however, maybe there should a certain amount of comments on each page instead of just scrolling down the page all the time to see what everyone wrote as the page does get quite lengthy...unless that's already being done. In that case, my bad ^^;[/QUOTE]

Re: Reply to the VLC question

[QUOTE]Needs more organised and allow us to import avatars[/QUOTE]

Re: reply

[QUOTE]Thanks to your feedback, we've made a couple changes. First off, as suggested by Webmastera, we've added "Top 20" and "Alphabetical List" view options to the main page. Next, as recommended by Crimson, the discussions now display only the latest 20 comments by default, making older posts viewable through a simple link at the top and bottom of the thread. Thanks for your suggestions, and we'll continue to monitor this thread for ideas to improve the VLC![/QUOTE]

Re: VLC Updates!

[QUOTE]Hey here is an Idea...mb it's just my way of reasoning...but when you hover over a topic wonder if its actually interesting or someone just put a flashy title the "users doing this" aren't particularily helpful. The discussion could have a decent amount of comments and very little users actually adding it to thier to-do list. I just think it would be more useful to display how many comment it has or something you know? 'Cause new people may not know bout the whole size of the text = popular topic or w.e. I dunno just pitchin ideas out whadda y'all think?[/QUOTE]

Re: Suggestions

[QUOTE]I'd be cool if we had more of those little pictures to choose from. I mean don't get me wrong, a jaguar is awesome and everything, but if I could fix any one thing, I'd make it so that people had more choices. Maybe just a few more?...[/QUOTE]

Re: Suggestions 2

[QUOTE]Ok. Send me some pix (small jpegs would be best) and we'll see if we can make them available. I'm not sure whether we iwll open it up to let anyone upload avatar images.[/QUOTE]

Re: more avatars

[QUOTE][QUOTE]Ok. Send me some pix (small jpegs would be best) and we'll see if we can make them available.[QUOTE] How?[/QUOTE]

Re: more avatars

[QUOTE]i think it would be pretty cool to have a chatroom in here, it would be a lot more interesting... I'm not saying it isn't cool now though, someone should have done this years ago[/QUOTE]

Re: chatroom

[QUOTE]It's a great idea to provide the forum for people on campus to find each other to discuss common interests and some connections. There seem to be a lot of online stuff happening on campus. For academic purposes, there are WebCT and Jump and the Libraries' E-Library resources. Jump can be used to organize some personal stuff. And now this Virtual Learning Commons. Although, there are some useful stuff for students to start their writing assignments and I like the calendar where people can do time management, can we start thinking about one common place where these bits and pieces of resources and forums can be consolidated into one portal arrangement? We are already asked to carry so many login and passwords around that the University of Manitoba online world is getting confusing rather than enticing and becoming an obvious connection point. J-Pop[/QUOTE]

Re: A bit confusing

[QUOTE]We are going to look at how we might integrate parts of the VLC with Jump, specifically, logins and the calendar.[/QUOTE]

Re: consolidating

[QUOTE]I think this site is awsome...a good way to meet new people...but ya....more avitars would be nice ^^[/QUOTE]

Re: This is cool

[QUOTE]i would like the v.l.c if someone was interested: Casting Call for everyone interesting in being infront of the camera this weekend for two hours of your time. Can be anytime you like as long as we have daylight still around. This is a student Film project for the final due december. Casting for two positions: 1) Need of an Arab/Middle Eastern/Indian male. Job would be to walk down the street. 2)Need of a woman to play a cashier. No prefered race. What you will get out of it: -Working on a student set -Free Lunch -Free Drinks -Help some student out who are in a bind to get it done. What you need: -Warm clothes -acting skill NOT needed -two hours from your weekend during the day Please reply to me as soon as you can! my email is friday13th777@hotmail.com This would really be appreciated!!!! -Danielle Price - Film Student[/QUOTE]

Re: casting for v.l.c

[QUOTE]I think the VLC is okay but what the U of M really needs IMO is something like an active BBS/Imageboard, like 4 Chan. Except the topics would be about educational matters instead of......what goes on in 4chan - and there would be rules on posting content.[/QUOTE]

Re: ##

[QUOTE]I personally think that it is okay, something similar to MSN or another IM engine might be better so you can see who is currently online. An intra-university chat room might be interesting? But as far as posting messages, this works.[/QUOTE]

Re: know what everyone thinks about this \"Virtual Learning Commons\"