openlearnigg FAQ

Check the About openlearnigg page.

It depends. You don't need a openlearnigg account if all you want is to browse through the courses and comments submitted by other openlearnigg users.

But if you want to really get the most out of openlearnigg, have your own personal Featured page, submit courses, vote on courses, leave comments, etc. then yes, you need a openlearnigg account.

To fully experience openlearnigg, we invite you to do create an account. You can always cancel it later at any time.

Click on the Submit course link in the left menu and enter the URL of the course you'd like to submit. After that, you'll need to enter a title, a brief descripion of the course and select the most appropriate category for the course you're submitting.

That's the number of up/down votes the course has received so far.

Depending on the "theme" (see My Settings), next to the number of votes, you will see either two small thumbs up/down icons, two up/down arrows or two text links:

Just click on the one you want, and your vote will be casted.

Once you vote on a course, you can not vote on it again nor change your mind. What you voted will be reflected by a grey thumb/arrow: it will be pointing up if you voted "up" or down if you voted..."down" :-)

Simple. If you liked the course and it's something you would recommend, then vote "up". If you didn't like it and it's something you definitely wouldn't recommend, then vote "down". Anything in between? You could think of it as "if I had to choose one, which one would it be?" or simply skip voting and move on to the next course.

"My Favorites" is a collection of those courses that you particularly liked, kind of like your browser favorites/bookmarks.

You can add a course to your favorites by clicking on the circled image with a + in it that appears next to each course title:

Other themes, instead of the image, you'll see a link that says "Save":

Once added to your favorites, the circle is replaced by a yellow ribbon (or by the text "Fav!", depending on what theme you're using).

Click on the course title.

You can click on either the "Join discussion..." link at the end of the description, or on the "Comment (x)" link (where X is the number of comments already made).

No. Although your Featured page will only get courses based only on what your sources think of them, when you engage in a conversation with other openlearnigg users, the conversation cannot be broken.

• My Featured page
  This is supposedly your entry page to openlearnigg. It contains four different blocks of information:
  • Alerts
    Here you will receive different alerts, so you know what's been happening since last time you visited. For example, you could be notified that someone has added you as a source, or that someone has replied to a comment you've made, etc.

  • My sources
    An excerpt of the last news courses that reached your Featured page (more on that later).

  • Last comments
    A quick list of the courses where you last left a comment. This way, you don't have to remember what courses were the last you commented, and can quickly and easily see if there are new comments, follow up on the conversation, etc.

  • Last voted
    Another quick list, this time showing the latest courses you voted. Like with the last comments block, this allows you to easily monitor how the latest courses you voted are evolving.

• My sources
  This is where the most interesting submitted courses, as determined by your sources, will appear. Not all courses that receive a positive vote by some of your sources may necesarily appear in this page. Only those that obtain certain ranking or score will. In short, this is your source for really interesting stuff.

  You can, however, from your My Settings page, modify this behavior and, if you like, set it up so that al courses submitted or voted up by at least one of your sources will appear in "My sources" page. Bottom line: you're in control, and it's very easy to do.

• Featured
  If "My sources" was presenting you the most interesting news according to your sources, here you'll see what the most interesting news are according to all openlearnigg users. Note that not one course stays ever as the first one in the Featured area. That is, when a course makes it on the Featured area, the rest of courses move down one position - even if those courses have received more votes.

• Upcoming
  This is where you see all the courses recently submitted, regardless of whether the person who submitted them is your source or not.
• Top
  This is where you see ALL courses, showing first those that have recived the most positive votes.

• Profile
  Here you can see and edit your profile info.

  You can also see your site stats: How many courses you've submitted, votes you've made, how many people have looked at your profile, and how many people you've selected as sources, as well as how many people have selected you as a source (your fans).

  Folllowing the "sources" and "fans" links in the Stats box, you can actually see who those people are, and add/remove them as your sources anytime you want.

• Favorites
  Here you can see what courses you've marked as "Favorite". That way, in addition to vote up/down on courses other people send, you can keep a collection of those sites or courses that you particularly liked.

  The main difference between your Favorites and anything else, is that you can modify the title and description of your favorites, so you can describe them however it makes sense to you. After all, they are your favorites. Note however that when you actually go to the course page in openlearnigg, the original title and description are preserved.

• Courses
  This option will show you three different sub-options:
  • Submitted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the courses you've submitted.

  • Voted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the courses you've voted on.

  • Comments
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the comments you've left.

    In this page, you are also notified anytime someone posts a reply to any of your comments. That way, you don't have to be sitting on a course page and reloading it countless times to see if someone replies to you. Just come to your Comments page and if someone does reply to you, you will see the alert message with a link to the course page. Extremely useful especially if you've left several comments on different courses.

• Network
  Here you will also see three different options:
  • sources
    A list of all users you have selected as your sources.

  • Fans
    A list of all users who have selected you as their source.

  • Like-minded
    A list of the openlearnigg users who seem to have the closest similar interests to yours. You can use this list for example to add any of them as sources.

• My Settings
  Here you configure how you want openlearnigg to work for you. From the criteria openlearnigg follows to build your personal Featured page, to the look and appearance of openlearnigg itself.

The User Ranking measures your degree of "openlearnigg-ness" somehow. By voting, submitting courses, posting and ranking comments, etc. you'll be doing things that may give you a better ranking. Of course, sending 30 comments a day or submitting 10 courses a day pointlessly is not going to do it for you.

Other things affect your ranking of course, but without getting into great detail, if you use openlearnigg and are a good sport, your ranking will go up.

Remember however that in openlearnigg, the influence of a user when it comes to get courses in other user's Featured pages is determined by those who select him as a source, not by the user ranking. When you submit a course, when you vote, etc. you are treated the same as everyone else, regardless of ranking.

So, what's the point of having a ranking then? Well, 99% of what makes openlearnigg is the people who use it, and let's just say that we like to know who those people are. Why? Because as time goes by, it will matter.

openlearnigg also maintains two different rankings: one global and one that resets the first of every month. In fact, somehow we try to give the monthly ranking a bit more exposure than the global ranking.

This means that the very first day of each month, we all are equally ranked :-)

By the way, both rankings are updated only once every 24 hours, usually between 12-1am Pacific time. So if you're interested in seeing whether someone's position in the ranking has gone up or down, you really only need to visit the page once a day.

This might happen especially as long as the number of users isn't very large, and even more at the beginning of the month when the monthly ranking is reset.

openlearnigg uses an internal "point" system to determine a user's position in the user ranking, where the user doesn't always get rewarded (or penalized) only depending on what she or he does. For example, a user accrues points when someone else assigns that user as their source.

And since I used the "selected as a source" example, it may be worth mentioning that a user won't gain nor lose points by being assigned as a source, then deassigned, then reassigned again, etc. If someone assigns you as a source, you'll get X points, and if later that person doesn't want you as a source anymore, you'll lose the same number of points you were given in the first place. And if too many people assign you as their source, the amount of points you get may decrease every time, depending also on a number of factors.

Most of the ranking rules are made that way, not to claim that it's impossible to game or trick it (it is not impossible), but to avoid making it at least too trivial to do so.

The short answer is no, at least not yet. However, if enough users give it a thumbs down and almost nobody gives it a thumbs up, the course will eventually dissapear from everyone's view.

Yes you can. Visit the Tools page where you'll find how to do that.

Yes. Again, visit the Tools page where it explains how to add a widget you your website.

Yes, they do, but they count just as any other source's votes. No more, no less. You could say that openlearnigg assumes that your opinion is as valuable to you as any of your sources opinions.

No. If you don't like a course or site, why should it still make it to your Featured page?

On the other hand, if you give thumbs down to a course that is already in your Featured page, for now it will still remain in your Featured page until new courses push it down, however very soon this will change so that courses you voted down do not show up in your Featured page.

Not exactly. Depending on how busy our servers are, openlearnigg calculates what new courses should go to your Featured page every once in a while, but never exceeding 60 minutes. Of course, whether it updates your Featured page every 5, 10 or 60 minutes, it always takes into account whatever happened ever since the last update.

Therefore, whether you check your Featured page via web or via RSS, usually you don't need to reload/update your Featured page more than once an hour in order to see whether there are new courses in your Featured page.

The number of votes and comments on a particular course are updated in real time.

Once a course makes it to your Featured page, it can only be pushed down by newer courses, but not removed, regardless of whether you add/remove sources or modify your settings.

For example, say today you add 3 new people as sources. These people's votes cause some courses to apear in your Featured page. Then, for whatever reason, you decide to remove them as sources. Those courses previously promoted to your Featured page will stay there until new courses "push them down". Once a course makes it to your Featured page, it'll stay there.

The only case where a course can be removed from your Featured page is if you give it thumbs down (read the previous FAQ 19).

It all depends how you've configured your "My sources" page includes... settings.

For example, if you've configured that option as:

• All courses... Submitted by any of my sources

The only new courses you'll get in your Featured page will be courses submitted by your sources.

If you have instead (or also):

• All courses... Voted by at least one of my sources

Then all it takes is for one of your sources to give a course a thumbs up to make it to your Featured page, regardless of who submitted the course. It's very straight-forward, really.

Things get a bit more fuzzy if you select Promoted courses instead of All courses, because now the promotion algorithm comes into play.

What this algorithm does is to look at how your sources (plus "sources of your sources" if you selected that option) have been voting on a course, then, depending how they voted plus a number of other factors, a course may or may not be promoted to your Featured page, regardless of whether the course was submitted by one of your sources or not.

On this first implementation of our FAQ we tried to cover the basic questions about using openlearnigg. As we write a more comprehensive FAQ and Help pages, should you have any questions, please contact us.