External Access to tulip sites now active

Its been on the table for a while, but its finally here. It is now possible for staff to create a sub-site in their programme or module site in Tulip and invite external users. This opens up the doors for collaborative teaching and learning opportunities.


In a nutshell, owners create a subsite, activate the sharing feature in the subsite and invite external collaborators using their preferred email address.

With your new subsite created, go back to the top level (main module or programme page) select Administration > Manage > Advanced (tab) > Manage external access > right click on the subsite you wish to make available and select the options.

The usual permissions are available: Owners, Members and Visitors, all of which you can decided who has what. So if you want your invitees to have full control set to Owner, if you want them to read only, then the Visitor option is best.

The more powerful feature is allowing 'anonymous access', this allows the whole world to see the site, so choose your powers wisely...

This feature is not available for My Sites.

Migrating Teaching and Learning content in TuLIP

As many of you are already aware the 2009 learning and teaching sites have now gone live. Here are some guides and further information to help ease the process. The following will be particularly useful when you migrate content from your existing 2008 teaching and learning sites to next academic year:

Where can I find my Learning and Teaching sites?
The site directory for all the teaching and learning sites can be found here (select options using the radio buttons): http://study.plymouth.ac.uk/sites/ltsitedirectory/Pages/Faculties.aspx

How do I migrate content from existing 2008 Learning and Teaching sites?
An ILS (Information Learning Service) guide to migrating your content: http://training.plymouth.ac.uk/training/onlinehelp/howto/Manage/Managing%20%20the%20new%202008%20Teaching%20and%20Learning%20Sites.docx

I want to see how this migration is done (Video) Created in Adobe Captivate, this shows you an example of how to migrate content from last years sites (courtesy of Rebecca Vickerstaff): http://www.tech.plymouth.ac.uk/learntech/captivate/migration_tool_2008_demo/migration_tool_2008_demo.htm

How to become a member of a module site (Video):
Module owners are taken from UNIT-e and are not carried over each year, so this has to be done manually. Created in Adobe Captivate, this shows you the process of becoming a member (courtesy of Rebecca Vickerstaff): http://www.tech.plymouth.ac.uk/learntech/captivate/joining_a_group_demo/joining_a_group_demo.htm
Further online help is available from ILS (such as TuLIP training guides): http://training.plymouth.ac.uk/training/onlinehelp/Pages/default.aspx

tulip showcase day - what happened?

The full listing of the event is available from tulip. We were welcomed in by Anita Jelling (Dean of Students) and then received a number of excellent presentations from academics using: SCOLAR (e-submission), Blogs and Wikis.

There was also an announcement from Mandy Goss (Services Man anger, ILS) regarding the new changes and additions to tulip, coming this September.

We were also presented with a range of posters showing off tulip teaching and learning content created by academics and learning technologsts. An excellent networking opportunity for those that attended:

tulip show case day - when and where?

Enhancing the student experience using tulip Showcase Day: Friday 19th June 2009, Babbage. Come and see how your colleagues have been using tulip:

• Programme and module tools


• How students have been using podcasts


• How blogs have been used for reflection


• Hear the experiences of electronic coursework submission


• Updates on the latest developments in tulip sites


• Talk to staff over lunch and browse the exhibition

If you would like to attend please book a place.

Email: staffdevelopment@plymouth.ac.uk

tulip - What is it?

What is it? - ‘tulip’ stands for ‘Teaching and Learning In Plymouth’ and it’s simply an alternative name for the Student Portal, including all Programme and Module sites.

Why bother renaming? - When the new Student Portal launched two years ago, it was the only University web system powered by the SharePoint framework. Staff got used to calling it “SharePoint” to distinguish it from the “old” Student Portal.

As other internet based systems move to SharePoint (eg, intranet, official documents system) and we get new spaces like “MySite”, it’s going to get very confusing if we keep calling everything SharePoint. Hence, it was suggested that each area should have its own name and brand to help us identify it. The name ‘tulip’ was chosen in a student competition.


I don’t use tulip, what does it look like? - Typically, the tulip logo appears on programme and module sites (displayed in the top left of the screen). See example below: