OPOSSEM OPOSSEM

This page has a current draft of all the FAQs for the MAIN OPOSSEM website. Feel free to edit or add.

FAQs already posted to OPOSSEM

==OPOSSEM Overview

• Who can join OPOSSEM?

OPOSSEM welcomes any instructors at secondary, undergraduate, or graduate institutions who teach social science research methods, including both qualitative and statistical methods. Though initially created by a group of political scientists, OPOSSEM welcomes instructors in any discipline, from economics to anthropology, including all the sociologists in between, who are interested in teaching students effective research skills and methods.

• How can I get involved?

You can start by creating a registered user account. Registered users can post to discussion forums, share their instructional materials, add new links, and comment and rate current content. OPOSSEM also relies on a handful of editors to help approve new accounts, moderate the discussion board, and respond to user queries. If you are interested in serving as an editor, please send an email to the current editors at admin@opossem.org.

User Accounts

• Why do I need to create an account?

Anonymous users who visit the site can read any discussions and download or browse any content without creating an account. However, to contribute to discussions and share materials, OPOSSEM requires users to register an account.

• Where is the login page?

You can log in at http://opossem.org/user/login.

• Where can I create an account?

You can go to http://opossem.org/user/register.

• What should I use as a user name?

You should use your full name, or first and last names, as your user name so that you can be correctly and easily identified throughout the site when you post content. Your user name is included in the recommended citation for shared instructional materials. You should avoid using an Internet handle such as “lovinstats83.”

• I can't remember my username/password! What can I do?

Use the following form to request a new password: http://opossem.org/user/password. You can enter either your screen name (usually your full first and last names such as “George Washington”) or the email address that you used to register for an account. An email will be sent to you with a temporary link to set a new password.

If you believe that you have an account, but OPOSSEM does not recognize your email, you might have used an alias or a different form of your address. If you cannot recall either the email address that you used when you registered or your screen name, you can use the advanced search options to search for your name at http://opossem.org/search/node/. You can enter the screen name that is displayed on your profile into the password reset tool. You will need to check all of your email accounts for an email from OPOSSEM.

If you are certain that you have an account, but neither of these strategies helps you find your account information, you can email the site editors at admin@opossem.org from the email account that you think you used to create the account. The editors cannot access your password, but they can look up your username and request that OPOSSEM send a password reset email to the email address on file.

• Where can I add/edit my profile?

After you are logged in, you can visit your profile at http://opossem.org/?q=user.

• Where can I change my screen name?

After you are logged in, you can change your screen name by visiting your profile at http://opossem.org/?q=user. Click on the “EDIT” tab to change your user name.

• Where can I change my password?

After you are logged in, you can change your password by visiting your profile at http://opossem.org/?q=user. Click on the “EDIT” tab to change your password.

• How should I list my OPOSSEM content on my curriculum vitae (CV)?

OPOSSEM suggests that you list your contributed instructional materials as contributions to your teaching activities on your CV. In addition to the citation, which appears on your materials page, OPOSSEM recommends that you include the number of page views, total number of file downloads, average rating, and number of ratings. Because this information is included on each page of your uploaded materials, colleagues interested in verifying your information can visit the pages themselves.

• I would like to include my contributions to OPOSSEM in my tenure or promotion file. How should I do this?

OPOSSEM members are encouraged to include their OPOSSEM contributions on their CVs as a teaching-related activity. In addition to the citation, which appears on your materials page, OPOSSEM recommends that you include the number of page views, total number of file downloads, average rating, and number of ratings. Because this information is included on each page of your uploaded materials, colleagues interested in verifying your information can visit the pages themselves. If your content is among the top downloads or views on the site, you may also want to indicate this and include a link to the relevant top download or view page.

Sharing Instructional Materials and Intellectual Property

• I publish my lecture notes on my personal website. Why should I also add them to OPOSSEM?

There are several advantages to adding your instructional materials to OPOSSEM in addition to posting them on your personal website.

First, by posting them to OPOSSEM, you make them available to other instructors who are expressly looking for materials like yours. This increases the likelihood that you will have an audience.

Second, posting materials to OPOSSEM provides a way for other users to give you feedback on your materials, including corrections, through the comment system. In this way, you harness the power of the community to help improve your materials, which you can edit or revise at any time.

Third, by including suggested citations on your instructional materials page, OPOSSEM helps remind users that they should cite your work in their own instructional materials, which they may be less likely to do unless you include such recommendations on your own site.

Fourth, by attaching a specific Creative Commons License to your instructional materials through OPOSSEM, you are also licensing the use of your materials in a highly visible manner, which also increases the likelihood that those who consult your materials will adequately cite them in their own instructional materials.

Finally, by publishing page views, download counts, and peer ratings of content, OPOSSEM provides third-party confirmation of the extent to which your materials have been accessed and the average ratings provided by users. This information should be useful for documenting your contributions to enhancing methods instruction for promotion purposes, including reputation, as measured by views, downloads, and ratings within the OPOSSEM community.

• My lecture notes include examples or text from published commercial textbooks. Can I still share the notes?

This depends on how extensive the example or quote is and whether it is properly documented or cited. Some academic uses of others’ intellectual property are permitted according to principles of fair dealing or fair use. If you are unsure whether your use is “fair,” then you should remove those portions of your lecture notes or assignments before sharing them on OPOSSEM.

• My lecture notes include equations from published commercial textbooks. Can I still share the notes?

Pure math cannot be copyrighted.

• How do I remove materials after I have uploaded them to OPOSSEM?

You may edit or delete any of your uploaded materials at any time. After logging in to OPOSSEM, just visit your profile page (http://opossem.org/?q=user) to find all of the materials that you have uploaded. Visit any instructional material page and choose the “EDIT” tab at the top of the page. There you will have the ability to edit the page text, delete attached files, upload new files, or delete the entire page. If you delete an entire page, you will also delete all of the comments, ratings, and usage statistics (view and download counts).

• What are Creative Commons licenses?

Creative Commons is a way to license copyrighted works that allows others to use and distribute the work under certain conditions. Educause, a non-profit association that promotes the use of information technology to advance higher education, has a short publication that helps explain the uses of Creative Commons licenses for academic work.

• Do I keep my copyright?

Applying a Creative Commons license is a means for sharing and distributing a work, but it does not change the legal copyright status of the work. You retain the copyright to any of your intellectual property. Furthermore, you have the option of removing your own work from OPOSSEM at any time.

Subscriptions, RSS, and Email Notifications

• What is RSS?

Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a format for publishing timely content from frequently updating websites. Readers can subscribe to RSS feeds from various websites and read them all in one place using a feed reader like Google Reader.

• Can OPOSSEM tell me when someone comments on my content?

On pages with discussion topics, instructional materials, and Web links, click on the word “Subscribe” to choose subscription options. You can edit your subscription preferences by visiting your profile page. There, you can choose to be notified by email of updates to those types of content, including your own.

You can also manage these settings in your user profile subscription settings. After logging in to the site, visit your user profile (http://opossem.org/?q=user), choose the “Subscriptions” tab, and then modify the “Auto-subscribe” options under “Settings.”

• How do I subscribe to a discussion forum?

There are two ways to subscribe to a discussion forum. First, you can subscribe via RSS feed using the feed address listed at the bottom of the forum page. For example, the feed address for the undergraduate teaching forum is http://opossem.org/forums/undergraduate-teaching/feed, which can be found at the bottom of http://opossem.org/forums/undergraduate-teaching. Second, you can have new topics and posts for particular forums sent to you in an email message. Visit your user profile page, choose the “Subscriptions” tab, and then choose the “Categories” option.

• How do I subscribe to a specific discussion topic to be notified of replies?

If you created the topic and have the “Auto-subscribe” option enabled (link to FAQ), you are automatically subscribed and will receive email notifications if you’ve chosen that option. If you do not have the “Auto-subscribe” option enabled or you want to subscribe to a discussion topic begun by someone else, you may subscribe by visiting the topic page and clicking the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of the original topic post. You can later manage your subscriptions (including “unsubscribing” from discussion topics) in your user profile: http://opossem.org/?q=user.

If you comment on a discussion topic, you will have the option to receive notifications when others also comment on it. Again, after you have subscribed, you can manage your subscriptions (including “unsubscribing” from discussion topics) in your user profile: http://opossem.org/?q=user.

• How can I find out about changes to OPOSSEM?

Periodically (about four or five times a year), OPOSSEM editors may post news items to the site about upcoming events or changes on the site. You can visit this page to see what’s happening with the project. Also, if you follow OPOSSEM on Facebook or Twitter, you will see any new news item on those pages. Finally, if you prefer, you can subscribe to the news items by email. [change newsletter option?]

Other Site Features

• What are “tags”?

Tags help to organize information. They are key words or phrases that describe a page, discussion, or other content. Most items or pages on OPOSSEM can be “tagged” with keywords, which help users find information more easily. You can also help organize the information on OPOSSEM by adding tags yourself. When you begin to type in the tag box, a list of terms that begin with those letters should appear.

• How can I use RSS to track content with certain tags?

This is easy to do on OPOSSEM. You can browse the tag cloud of existing tags on OPOSSEM and choose any tag in which you’re interested. On that tag’s page, you will see an RSS icon at the bottom of the page. Imagine that you’re interested in following any posts of materials or discussion about the American National Election Study (ANES). You could visit the ANES page and subscribe to its RSS feed.

• What are “points”?

Points are a way to measure the quantity of OPOSSEM members’ participation in the community. Different types of contributions to the OPOSSEM community generate a different number of points. For instance, sharing instructional materials earns more points than rating someone else’s instructional materials.

• I found an error in some of the posted material, what should I do?

If it is an instructional material posted by an OPOSSEM community member, you might consider posting a comment on the page where you downloaded the material or emailing the member directly to let him or her know of the error. If the member does not respond and the material is posted with the CC BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License), then you might also consider posting a corrected version of the content to OPOSSEM with attribution and a link to the original.

If you discover some error in the site that is not in user generated content, you can email the site administrators at admin@opossem.org.

FAQs batch 2

Add to Overview

• put this one at top* I put a lot of effort into my lecture notes and slides. Why should I share them online with anyone else?

The short and snarky answer is that if you are asking the question, you probably shouldn't participate in the project. OPOSSEM is part of a sea-change in the provision of collective goods through decentralized, massively collaborative projects. In theory, these efforts should fail. And many do. But others succeed, both on a very large scale, such as Wikipedia, Linux, LaTeX, and R, or on the small scale of the thousands of free applications available for the iPhone and Android.

The answer ultimately depends entirely on what makes you happy. OPOSSEM has neither plans nor the resources to send legions of jackbooted thugs (or rampaging packs of slobbering marsupials) to smash down office doors and wrench your precious lecture notes and problem sets from your cold, dying hard drive. Participation is entirely voluntary. Some people enjoy participating in collective efforts: if you are in any town anywhere in the world, you can probably witness more voluntary time expended on social, sports, charitable and civic activities on any randomly chosen weekend than we are likely to invest in the entire history of OPOSSEM. Others don't find such activities rewarding. It's your call.

• But dudes, you are like totally messing with me here: rational choice theory says, definitively, that this cannot possibly work!

Okay, okay, calm down. So go to your bookshelf, and take out a journal, and open it to a rational choice article. How did the article get there? The author spent a great deal of time and effort writing it, and then sent it to the journal. For free. It was reviewed by multiple people. For free. A university paid an academic editor to handle to review process and possibly edit the article. The author, reviewers and university then pay to get the article!

Compared to that system, OPOSSEM is a paragon of rationality. You still submit the work for free, but you can get access to it for free. And our reviewers aren't anonymous—you can click the "History" tab to see the identity of everyone who has contributed and edited.

Oh brave new world. That has such people in't! <ref>http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/The_Tempest/9.html</ref>

• Who is using OPOSSEM materials?

• Who is sponsoring OPOSSEM?

OPOSSEM has received support from various sources. The initial development of the site was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), through a grant administered by the University of South Dakota. Staff at the ICPSR at the University of Michigan developed the site, and site hosting is provided by the Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship and McMaster University Library. In 2012, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada will fund a workshop at McMaster to develop additional educational materials to be hosted on OPOSSEM. The OPOSSEM project is always looking to expand its community and network of partners. Interested parties should email admin@opossem.org.

• What are “ratings”? (also put in Instructional Materials, if possible via tags)

OPOSSEM allows registered users to use a 5-star system to ‘rate’ both instructional materials and web links. Users can only rate an item one time. This helps users find materials and links that are considered particularly helpful by other members of the community. No one can see who rated their material or what rating an individual user gave the material or link. This is to reduce measurement error in the rating system.

Add to Sharing Instructional Materials

• How do I upload my instructional materials?

Once you have created a user account, you may upload your instructional materials (lecture notes, lecture slides, problem sets, in-class exercises, etc.) by visiting: http://opossem.org/node/add/instructionalmaterials. You may attach multiple files and file formats to one page. For instance, if you have both lecture notes and in-class exercise hand-outs that belong together, you can add both documents to one page.

• What types of files can I upload as instructional materials?

Currently, only files with the following extensions may be uploaded:

• Graphics: jpg jpeg gif png eps tif
• Open document formats: txt rtf pdf csv pps ps
• Microsoft: doc xls ppt pptx
• Open Office: odt ods odp
• Tex/LaTeX/BibTeX: tex dtx ltx bib bbl bst idx ist clo cls sty def ldf fd cfg

If you need to upload another file type, please let us know by emailing admin@opossem.org.

• What types of files should I upload as instructional materials?

That depends.

If you have chosen the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), then you would probably want to upload a file format that is difficult to manipulate or modify, such as a password protected Acrobat (PDF) file.

On the other hand, if you choose the license that encourages others to modify or improve upon your work as long as they cite your original contribution (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)), you should upload a file format that will be usable by the greatest number of users and which will stand the test of time. For instance, rather than upload a document in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), consider uploading a document as a Rich Text Format (.rtf). Instead of uploading a Stata file (.dta), consider uploading tab-delimited (.txt) or comma-delimited text file (.csv).

• What is the largest file size that I can upload?

The maximum upload size is 7 MB. If you have a datafile that you would like to post that exceeds this limit, consider compressing the file (as a .zip or .tar).