Social bookmarking is an increasingly popular way to find, save, classify, evaluate and share Internet resources. Users can save or "bookmark" favorite Web sites and classify, or "tag" them any way that works for them. These bookmarks are then added not only to their personal list, but also to the overall repository where others can see them. Students and faculty can then use each other's classifications, as well as any of the other information they have regarding those resources (who saved it, how many people saved it, etc.) to evaluate and find what they are looking for.*
Scholar is a free academic resource sharing, or "social bookmarking", service that is customized for education and integrated with the Blackboard Learning System. Built on the principles of Web 2.0, Scholar provides students and faculty with an exciting new way to store, share and discover educationally viable resources on the Web and use them in their everyday teaching, learning and research.* Download Scholar brochure [PDF]
For an overview of Scholar, view this 8 minute tutorial.
To register for an account, login to Blackboard at http://webcourses.niu.edu. Then, click on the "Scholar" tab near the top of the page.
Next, enter a desired username and password for your new Scholar account as well as answer to a selected security question in the event that you forget your account information in the future. This account information doesn't need to match your NIU AccountID and password, as your Scholar account, while integrated with Blackboard at NIU, is also a stand-alone account you can access at scholar.com.
Success! Your Scholar account is now created. You can add other details to your profile at this point or immediately begin adding bookmarks.
A bookmarklet is a button that can be installed in your browser in the Links Toolbar (Microsoft Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks Toolbar (Mozilla Firefox).
Once installed, any time you are browsing the Web and discover a site you want to bookmark and therefore save to Scholar, click on the bookmarklet to add that site to Scholar without ever having to navigate away from the page. Complete details on installing the Scholar bookmarklet are available here.
Scholar allows users to bookmark their favorite online resources for easy access later by user-driven meta data referred to as tags. Users apply meaningful topic tags as well as course and discipline specific tags to not only make it easy to find bookmarked resources later but also to share with others.
After installing the bookmarklet, navigate to an online resource that you want to bookmark. Click the browser bookmarklet to bookmark.
The Add a Bookmark form then opens. The title and URL of the desired Web resource will automatically appear in the associated fields in the add a bookmark form. Enter some tags to serve as keywords to help identify what the resource as well as make it easy to find and share with others. If this resource pertains to a specific discipline or course that you are enrolled in, simply select those tags from the drop-down lists provided. Finally, should you wish to keep this bookmark private so that no one else can view, select "Private" for the status. Then click "Save."
You will be returned to the Web page your were viewing so you can continue working. You can view all your bookmarks by accessing your Scholar home either by clicking the "Scholar" tab in Blackboard or by logging in at scholar.com.
Faculty can easily add any static bookmarks from either their personal Scholar account or global collection of bookmarks directly into a Blackboard course. To do so, navigate to the content area in which the bookmarks will reside, such as "External Links." Click the "Edit View" link. In the drop-down pick list of available items to add, select "Scholar Bookmark"
A search box appears allowing one to search by any number of criteria for a particular bookmark to add. To search for just bookmarks of an individual user, click "Add Criteria" and select "User Name" to enter the appropriate Scholar username and then click "Search."
Select the desired bookmark(s) from the list and then scroll to the bottom and click "Submit."
After clicking "OK" on the following confirmation screen the new bookmark(s) will be visible in the selected content area of the course. The title and description of the bookmark appear as the item title and description in Blackboard.
Streams are dynamic collections of bookmarks built off saved searches within Scholar. Faculty can choose to add one or more streams of bookmarks to Blackboard in addition to individual bookmarks as described above. The benefit of adding streams of bookmarks is that as new resources are added to Scholar that meet the defined criteria of the stream, the associated new bookmarks dynamically are added to the stream and subsequently the content area of the course where the imported stream resides.
To import a stream of bookmarks, navigate to the content area in which the bookmarks will reside, such as "External Links." Click the "Edit View" link. In the drop-down pick list of available items to add, select "Scholar Stream."
Create a custom search with criteria for the stream. Employ as many or as few search criteria as necessary to achieve the desired collection of resources.
Preview the results of the selected criteria. If acceptable, save the search by entering a title for the search, specifying the number of results to display, and confirm by clicking "Add Stream to Blackboard."
After clicking "OK" on the following confirmation screen the new bookmark(s) will be visible in the selected content area of the course.
The Profile in Scholar is robust and expansive, giving you the opportunity to share as much information about yourself with other Scholar users as you would like.** Click here for more details about editing your Scholar profile.
You can import existing bookmarks/favorites from your browser, or from another social bookmarking service like del.icio.us, into your Scholar Bookmarks so that you can keep all of your bookmarks in one place for easy access and easy use in your research and studies. Click here for complete details on importing and exporting bookmarks.
Note: While bookmarks can be imported in a batch process, they can not be removed in a similar fashion. Therefore, exercise caution when importing large collections of previous bookmarks as a later decision to remove all imported bookmarks involves selecting each bookmark individually for removal.
The Scholar Course Home is a private, course-level section of Scholar that faculty can customize. Uses for the Scholar Course Home include:
To enable the Scholar Course Home, click "Tools" and then "My Scholar Course Home."
Next, select the corresponding discipline for the course from the drop-down pick list and then click "Register Course".
Success! The Scholar Course Home loads in the main content frame in Blackboard. Two default streams appear in your Scholar Course Home: a discipline stream and a stream based on the course tag. The Scholar Course Home is now active for students to access directly from Scholar.com as well as from within the course.
Students can access the Scholar Course Home anytime from the "Tools" menu item. To add a link to the Scholar Course Home to make it easy for students to access
To learn more about further configuring your Scholar Course Home page, view this 8 minute tutorial.
*Text introduction to Scholar and social bookmarking provided by Blackboard's Client Collatoral Center. Source document available for download [PDF] here.
**Text content for select documentation items provided by the Scholar Wiki, available at http://wiki.scholar.com.
Last Updated: 4/23/2008