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The Online Academic Advisor

Thursday, December 14th 2006
Contents

  1. Community News
  2. New Features
  3. Why the New Features?
  4. Cooperation with Google
  5. Warm wishes

1. Community News

Our community is growing. We have seen outstanding people joining and enquiring about it daily. In fact, if you think about it, it is the first community where students and academics can talk to each other. That is, why it attracts so much interest from the academic world.

We have got people researching fascinating areas of knowledge: patents, physics, law, electrical engineering, math, chemical engineering, psychology, physiology, history, business management, agriculture, computer science, finance, medicine, mecanics, nautical sciences, biology etc.

At the same time, we have got people from all over the world: United Kingdom, United States, Germany, India, Thailand, Russia, Canada, Portugal, Egypt, Hungary, Turkey, Latvia etc.

The community is very creative and innovative. The community members want to learn from each other. To foster the creativity, innovation and eagerness to learn, we have set out to provide the community with the best tools and services. In this newsletter, we would like to announce new features available at the portal.

2. New Features

In the last couple of months, we have been busy enriching the portal with some new features. Our aim has been to reinforce academic discussions going on there. But at the same time, we wanted to provide you, as well as the future members, with the opportunity to get to know each other better and to socialise.

Discussion Groups is a new free service available at the portal. Whenever you log in, you will see a link to the Discussion Groups Area, which will take you there.

What can you use the discussion groups for? Short question, long answer.

Students can use them to discuss academic issues with peers. As a student, you can socialise, find friends within the community as well as make new ones using the discussion groups. Moreover, you can find an academic, who could offer you a scholarship and agree to be your research supervisor.

Academics can use the discussion groups to create their own research communities. They can also organise pre- and post-conference activities using the groups. Furthermore, the discussion groups can also be used to socialise, meet fellow researchers as well as get to know new ones. Finally, academics can find new PhDs and PostDocs to advance their research.

Every member can create a discussion group and invite students and academics from the community to join. At the same time, you can invite your friends, who are not yet community members, to join your groups. Discussions can be led in the language of your choice.

There are two kinds of discussion groups you can create. On the one hand, you can create an open group any other member can join. But on the other hand, if you wish to create a more closed community, you can choose to authorise other members before they can join your group.

All in all, here is what you can do on the portal with the Discussion Groups feature:
Students can now:           Academics can now:
This is a lot more than you used to have, is not it? Yes, it is. And we are happy to deliver these features for you to use. But you may ask yourself, why exactly these features? Read on to get the answer.

3. Why the New Features?

Remember, we said that our community is very creative and innovative. There is a reason for us to say so. We have been contacted by a number of community members, who asked questions. Lots of questions, indeed. And we are grateful for those questions. People asked, why they cannot communicate with each other on other matters than research. They also asked if they can find a scholarship on the portal. Furthermore, they asked if it is possible to find potential PhD students there etc.

These questions provoked the emergence of the Discussion Groups. Our answers to your questions are now "yes, you can", "yes, it is possible".

But this is a good example of the way The Online Academic Advisor works. Miss a feature? Want to suggest something? Go here and share your thoughts. We appreciate it a lot. And it is you, who will benefit from the new features we will deliver for you.

4. Cooperation with Google

We have partnered with Google to provide you with information on related services and businesses. The information is provided in form of text advertisements at the top and bottom of every page on The Online Academic Advisor.

5. Warm wishes

This is the last newsletter of 2006. As the new year draws close, we would like to extend warm wishes for a happy, interesting and healthy year. Watch your mailbox for upcoming newsletters in 2007. And do not forget to make use of the new features on the portal.


Thanks for being part of The Online Academic Advisor, the world's strongest research community growing daily.

Happy Researching!
The Online Academic Advisor Team

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Copyright © 2006 The Online Academic Advisor. All rights reserved. You may not copy or publish excerpts, but you are welcome to forward this newsletter in its entirety.