Group Studio Overview

Group Studio Overview

What is Group Studio?

Group Studio is a collection of collaborative tools for enhancing communication and organization among specified users. It is available via an icon link from your Luminis/MyOakton portal.

Users may belong to multiple groups, each with its own instance of Group Studio. In addition, sub-groups may be set up mirroring the relationship of a committee and sub-committee.

Access to Groups/Joining a Group

Groups may be set up as public, restricted or hidden.

1. Public groups are open for anyone to see and to join.
2. Restricted groups are those where membership is subject to certain criteria. For example, a group can be restricted to faculty or to a specific department. Membership can still be subject to a sub-set of criteria.
3. Hidden groups generally are both restricted and reserved for handling sensitive information. A Group leader invites users to become group members in a Hidden group.

When a user enters the groups area by clicking the icon, he will see the groups to which he belongs listed under the MyGroups tab.

Under the Groups Index tab, all the public and restricted groups are listed with icons identifying their access status.

Users can view a guest page for any non-hidden group and submit a request for membership, which the group’s leader will rule on.

Membership Management/Member Permissions

Minimally, one group leader is given the permissions to moderate what materials can be shared amongst group members. The leader can delegate permissions to other members on a feature-by-feature basis. Members not assigned needed permissions can submit materials for consideration. Submitted materials go into a staging area where the leader will review, approve and post as he sees fit.

Users can determine their permissions on a particular tool by whether they have a Submit button OR a Post button.

Group Tools

The availability of specific tools is generally determined when the group is created and vary according to the individual member’s rights.

All members of the group will see a menu of the basic “Group Tools.”An example of a full menu is shown here to the right.

The Homepage provides a summary of group information and easy access to post announcements, files, photos, and other information that group members use for collaboration. The summarized information on Group Homepage is set up as a hyperlink to the actual page displaying all content for the selected topic.

Announcement titles and the beginning of the announcement bodies appear on the group homepage. Click a title to view the whole announcement or click the Announcements link in the left column. Also click the announcements link to post or submit a new announcement.

Note: Group announcements should also appear to members in the Personal Announcements area of MyOakton. This helps group members track new group activities.

The News tool is generally used to share news articles amongst members. Articles up to 25,000 characters can be typed or pasted into the news composition window.

Articles can be set as active (available for all members to read) or inactive (stored in the system but not currently displayed to members).

Note on posting Announcements, Articles, etc,: Group Studio will allow use of simple HTML formatting. When composing, insert HTML tags as you would when creating a web page in Notepad or other text editor. Include only what you would find between the <BODY</BODY> tags of a web page’s source code.

Photos can be posted to a central location for use in an album or for posting on the Group Studio home page and sub-pages. Posting on pages tend to be limited to one “featured” image and in the case of the Homepage, are locked into a specific page spot.

Photos can be in either GIF or JPG format and should be optimized for file size before uploading. Like news articles they are also designated active or inactive.

Linksto web pages on the Oakton site or any non-Oakton site can be shared in the Links area. Short descriptions and titles can also be included. The homepage can also include a few “featured” links for sites of primary importance.

Files is a tool where documents created in outside programs such as Word or Excel can be stored in Group Studio for sharing amongst members. New files can be uploaded from any local drive (the user’s hard drive, H: drive, or portable media) on what ever work or home computer the member is working on. They can be organized by setting up folders and subfolders.

A Windows-type search function allows members to locate and access files by various criteria.

Files can be opened by clicking on the file name (similar to opening a file from My Computer).

Note for off-campus users: You must have a program installed on your computer that is capable of opening the desired file—if a Word file, you need Word or a compatible word processor or “viewer”.

Message Board is Group Studio’s tool for threaded, asynchronous discussions. A member can post a topic then other members can create messages relating to the topic and/or reply to messages.

Clicking Message Board on the menu takes members to a list of currently available discussion topics. Clicking on a Topic title opens that specific discussion where the member can add messages or message replies.

The group leader (or his delegate) maintains the message board and can delete topics or individual messages.

Group E-mail assists members in sending email to each other. Users compose a message using the Group Studio email tool and can choose to send to individual members or all members. The message will be sent to each member’s main email account (as declared to Oakton) and is read by the recipient member using the regular email client program on the computer he is using at the time.

Chat is a fairly standard chat room tool where group members can conduct a real time, linear text discussion. As shown in the illustration, posted comments would show in the large field in the upper right;new comments are typed in the field in the lower (press enter key to post);names of members taking part in the current session are listed in the upper right field.

Members can send private messages to one or more specific members by selecting their name(s), typing a message in the bottom left field per usual, then clicking the “Whisper” button instead of pressing the enter key.

Chat session comments can be saved by dragging the mouse across all the posted comments to select then copy-paste into a text editor.

Calendaris an instance of the standard Luminis/MyOakton calendar that is dedicated to group activities. Events can be posted and displayed to either the whole group or specified individual members.

A member of the group can include the group calendar in a “set” with his (Luminis) personal calendar as well as Luminis calendars for other groups to which he belongs.

Group Leader Tools

Group leader tools will appear on the group home page only to the main group leader and to members who have management of certain tools delegated to them.

Leaders use the Content and Configuration tools to manage the group tools, including such tasks as:

• Lay out the homepage
• Clean up the discussions and chats
• Activate/deactivate/post/delete announcements, photos, files and other materials
• Create the Guest View. This is a page non-members see when the group is not hidden. It gives a brief description of the group and allows guests to request membership or initiate other contacts.
• Manage membership and member permissions
• Manage sub-groups
• Choose group tools to be available to the group

Sub-Groups

Groups can have “sub-groups,” essentially subsets of the main group’s overall interest, much like sub-committees. They have the same tools, permissions and structures of the main group but can use them to focus on more specific topics.

A computer discussion group, for instance, could have sub-groups for different operating systems like Mac, Win or Unix.

Sub-group members are automatically members of the main group but not vice versa.

Portions of this document adapted from the following materials:

Adding Members

To add members to a group:

1. Click ‘Members’ under the Configuration Tools menu
   
2. Click ‘Add by Login’ and type the new member’s login ID in the name field.
   You can type in as many names as you wish.
   
3. Click ‘Add Members’
   
4. When the dialog box pops up asking you to type a short message to the new members, do so. This will be emailed to their Oakton email accounts.
   

Group Studio OverviewPage 1 of 610/16/2018