Sharing, feedback, and collaboration with PowerNotes

The Basics - OPENING RESEARCH AND EARLY WRITING TO REVIEW

In many cases, research is a solitary endeavor conducted by students without supervision or review. Small mistakes and misunderstandings made in the early stages of the research and writing process can lead to larger mistakes down the road.

PowerNotes has built an early feedback feature which allows students to share their research, at any stage, with faculty, librarians, writing centers, and peers so that it can be reviewed and corrections can be made earlier in the process, particularly for online and distance learning scenarios. This post will show you how to:

• Share a PowerNotes Project
• View a shared Project
• Add and review feedback
• Manage your shared Projects
• Leave a shared Project

HOW TO SHARE YOUR PROJECTS IN POWERNOTES

There are two ways to share projects in PowerNotes: from the Project Dashboard and from the Project Outline.

On the Project Dashboard, hover over a project card. Below the card the Share icon appears on the left. Click on the Share icon.

To share from the Project Outline, click on the Share Icon beneath the project title.

After clicking on the Share icon on the Project Dashboard or in your Project Outline, the share dialog will appear. Users can enter the email addresses of those they wish to share their project with and select if they would like to give recipients Editor or Commenter capabilities.

Editors are able to contribute content (highlights, notes) to a project, as well as delete, edit, and reorganize highlights, notes, topic names, and more. Commenters can view a project that is shared with them and comment on existing content. They cannot add, edit, delete, or reorganize content.

An email and notification with an access link will be sent to the appropriate people so they can access the shared project. After clicking on the access link, the user will be prompted to accept or decline the share invite.

Users can also remove someone from their shared project at any time by opening the menu next to a name or email address in the share dialog box and selecting remove’ from the permissions menu. Once someone is removed from a project, they will no longer be able to access it.

Projects that have been shared with users will appear under the Shared With Me section of their Project Dashboard. These shared Projects can be accessed at any time while the share is active. The Project owner’s initials will appear in the bottom right of the shared Project card. Hover over the initials to see the owner’s full name.

VIEWING A SHARED PROJECT

Commenters viewing a shared Project can view content (all sources, notes, and highlights), leave comments on, and download the Project outline. Unlike an Editor, they cannot delete content, change content, edit topic names, reorganize content, or move anything into a Project of their own.

Reviewers of shared Projects can also sort the Project outline by date and by source as well as filter the content by using the sort and filter controls on the right side of the Project Outline. The sort and filter operations are done on the users browser and do not permanently change the Project owner’s work.

To avoid any confusion, Projects that are shared with you have a purple banner across the top of the Project Outline.

PROVIDING AND REVIEWING FEEDBACK

Shared Projects can also be reviewed and feedback provided through a commenting feature. To leave a Comment on content in a Shared Project, just hover over a snippet with content and click on the Add Comment link (for snippets without any existing comments) or Show Comments link (for snippets with existing comments) in the bottom right of the snippet. All users with access to a Project can view all comments made by any other user.

Comments can be formatted with bolding, italics, and underlining as well as made into a list or quotation.

Comments can be filtered with the Comment Filter at the bottom of the filter menu on the right side of the Project Outline. In the Comment Filter section, users will be able to see if any new comments have been added to the project since they last viewed it. They will also be alerted of new comments in a Project in their notifications.

Comments can be left on snippets of content, but more general comments can also be made. These general comments are called Project Comments. They are displayed at the top of the page. A Project Comment can be made by clicking on the Project Comment icon just beneath the project title.

With both comments on snippets and Project Comments, you can edit or delete any comment that you make. Just hover over the comment that you would like to change and edit and delete will appear in the upper right corner.

MANAGING SHARED PROJECTS

We’ve also added some new features to the Project Dashboard to help faculty manage multiple shared Projects. Reviewers can now view their Project Dashboard in traditional Card View or a new List View, which allows more projects to be seen in one screen. Reviewers can also filter Projects on the dashboard by all, just their Projects, Projects that have been shared with you, Projects that have been shared by you, and Projects that have been archived. 

LEAVING SHARED PROJECTS

Reviewers can leave a shared Project at any time by hovering over the shared Project on the dashboard and clicking on the “leave” icon that appears below it (in card view) or in it (in list view). 

Comments left by a reviewer will remain in the original Project even if the reviewer leaves that Project.

If you have any issues using the PowerNotes feedback features, feel free to get in touch with us.