Quotient recently completed the implementation of a Communities of Practice website for the Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS) of the Department of Education's Office of Adult Vocational Education (OVAE). OVAE needed an updated approach to the collaborative platform that had been used for their community. Previously, mailing lists based on outdated technology was used to communicate and collaborate. Quotient recommended a change to a Drupal based platform. By leveraging a well-known Drupal profile entitled Drupal Commons, Quotient created a secure, interactive, 508 compliant, web 2.0, site which is now the LINCS Communities of Practice (The LINCS Community). Features of this site include threaded discussions, advanced notifications and subscriptions, document and image uploading, event calendars, a membership directory, SSL security encryption, as well as using an advanced group membership model. When an end-user joins a group, they may participate in discussions, upload and discuss documents, post events to the group even calendar, send direct message to other group members, as well as other group-focused activities. Keeping up with the plethora of activity can be a challenge for end-users belonging to several groups. To address this dilemma, end users have a ‘new content dashboard’. This dashboard contains text snippets and direct links to any new content a user has not seen since they last logged into the site. This feature alone makes belonging to a community-based site palatable, as it saves users substantial time from having to click through each group to see what is new.
View the LINCS Community: community.lincs.ed.gov