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The Online Academic Advisor

Tuesday, January 30th 2007
Contents

Community News
New Features
Warm Wishes

1. Community News

Our community is ever growing. In fact, there is no single day without new registered community members . The average number of new registrations is increasing every week. So, do come regularly to The Online Academic Advisor to get connected with the new people and spread the word about the portal within your organisation and on your website.

As you know, the portal has been for students and academics. However, we have received a number of enquiries from people around the world who are neither students nor academics but wanted to join the community. So, we decided to give these people a chance to join. Here is how you can join as a Member of Public . If you know someone, who might be interested in joining, do let them know.

As usual, there are exciting new features on the portal to check out. Read on.

2. New Features

It has always been your desire to be able to browse user profiles . Now you can do it. Here is how. Just enter a search keyword and hit enter. You will get a list of users that correspond to the search keyword. For each user, you will see communities and groups the user is member of. Furthermore, you will see the user's friends as well as be able to send a message to the user.

Communities , Friends , Messages ? What the hell is this, you may ask. These are the new features we will tell you about below. All the features are free. Keep reading.

Research is done in communities, right? Sure, you say. So, now you can create communities on our portal. A Community has a leader and members, who can create related discussion groups that contribute towards an overall topic, the community goal. It is like a conference with a program chair, program committee and attendees. Community discussion groups correspond to conference tracks. So, go and create a community now. And get people working in your research area join it.

That is cool, you say. But what is the difference between a discussion group and a community? The difference is that a discusssion group is just a conversation on a particular topic whereas a community is a set of such conversations that are related and contribute to an overall topic. You can create just a discussion group without a community if you wish. It all depends on the problem in your mind. If you have got a larger topic that has the potential to spark different groups, create a community. If you have got a narrow problem that is unlikely to unfold in various discussions, create a group.

OK, the next new feature we will tell you about is the ability to make friends on the portal. Every time you view a user profile, you will get the opportunity to make the user a friend. All your friends are then easily accessible via My Friends link on the portal. You can communicate with your friends via messages, which is the next feature we would like to tell you about.

Messages are a quick and easy way to communicate with other users on the portal. Every time you view a user profile you will be able to send the user a message that they will see in their incoming messages folder. The user will then be able to send a reply message to you etc.

And last but not least, if you wish to just greet a user you do not know yet, you can take advantage of a prepared Hello Message, which indicates your interest in the user and that you want to get in touch.

That's it with regard to the new features on the portal. Exploit and digest them.

3. Warm wishes

This is the first newsletter of 2007. We wish all our members a happy, healthy and productive year. Boost your academic productivity: Find new interesting people on our portal, get in touch with them and take your studies further.

Finally, spread the word about The Online Academic Advisor within your university. And if you have got a website, please, add a link to The Online Academic Advisor to let your website visitors know about the portal. We would very much appreciate it.

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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