How to Guide: Adding to the Conversation or Taking Over a Page
How to contribute to a pathway that someone has already created
Your potential goals: We are glad to hear that you want to contribute to the conversation! You may have read a pathway or learning module and know of other sources that are important to you on the topic. You may disagree with the author on all or a few points and want to make your thoughts or experience known. You may think there is a need to highlight differing opinions on a topic.What are your options?
What a comment does/looks like: Comments appear on a page near the bottom. Click on the comments link to read others’ comments and to add your own. This may be a suggestion, addition to the information on the page, or opinion respectfully worded.
See the example images below.
What an annotation does/looks like:
An annotation acts like a commentary for media like videos. It can also be added to the content of a page. When you add an annotation, a link appears that readers can click on for the annotated content. Examples of annotations can be found on the Scalar user guides here: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/guides/how-annotations-appear-in-scalar
An example annotation page is also in the pathway below and liked here: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/foodwords-draft/frogtown-summit-university-food-health-and-wellness-map
This page was created as an annotation to a media page that was uploaded into Scalar. If there is a media page in this Scalar book that you would like to comment on, this may be a good method.
View the how to annotate instructions in this learning module for more instructions.
Creating your own pathway: A new pathway with a clear title that differs from the original pathway enough to make a clear distinction can also contribute to the conversation. This method allows you complete control over which media you incorporate and what your thoughts are on the topic. You can add annotations to other pages in this pathway as well if you would like to point to the original pathway to make clear that you are having a conversation with another author. See the See the “Instructions on How to Add or Edit Modules/Pathways, Media, Pages, etc.” pathway for more instructions on how to create pages and pathways.
Adding a page to the pathway:
- Create a new page or pages with your thoughts or additional media that you would like to include. See the “Instructions on How to Add or Edit Modules/Pathways, Media, Pages, etc.” pathway for more instructions on how to create pages and pathways.
- To add your new pages to the existing pathway, click the “edit” button on the first page of the pathway you want to add your page(s) to. Below the content, there will be an option to “Make this page a path”. Select this, on the pop up window, use the radio buttons at the top to select the type of page, select the page or media. You can then reorder the items in the pathway to make sense. Please note that it is respectful to preserve the order that the original author created so do your best to respect their message and thoughts while adding your own.
Taking over an entire page or pathway:
- Contact the original author to let them know you would like to add to or make changes to their pages or pathway/module. This is part of being a respectful member of the community. To look up the contact information for the author, click on the hyperlinked name of the author to be directed to their bio page. If there is no contact information listed there, contact WHO?
- Access the page through the Dashboard. Click the “Edit” button at the bottom of the page and make your additions. See the “Instructions on How to Add or Edit Modules/Pathways, Media, Pages, etc.” pathway for more instructions on how to create pages and pathways.
Where to look for comments:
Example comment window:
