Upgrade StorageWeb Library - is there an easy way to include introductory/instructional material for students?
Hi,
I'm interested in using the Groups functionality in Zotero's Web Library for sharing a reading list / bibliography with students, one of the use cases described on the Zotero website.
However, at least for my classes, it is an essential feature of such a system that there is a way to provide introductory and instructional material to the students--that is, material which summarizes and describes the resources listed in the bibliography, providing some context, summarising key arguments. Ideally, each section of the reading list or bibliography should have such material.
Class reading list/bibliography software such as Leganto or Tallis allow the teacher to include an introduction for each section of the reading list, and to thus to provide brief topic overviews or instructions for students in a free text box. Such material is anchored to the top of the page, and clearly demarcated from the reading list entries.
This appears not to be possible in Zotero Web Library. Is anyone is aware of any work around?
I have considered using a standalone note item for the introductory / instructional material. The problem with this approach is that the note appears as just another item in the list, so it will not be obvious to the students that it contains material of a different kind. And once the student searches, the note will get lost in the search, inasmuch as there is no way to pin it to the top.
Another way forward may be to use a third party interface to a Zotero Bibliography such as Kerko. Kerko doesn't appear to support this functionality out of the box, but it looks like it could be modified relatively easily to support it.
If anyone is aware of other solutions, I would love to hear about them.
Thank you
James
I'm interested in using the Groups functionality in Zotero's Web Library for sharing a reading list / bibliography with students, one of the use cases described on the Zotero website.
However, at least for my classes, it is an essential feature of such a system that there is a way to provide introductory and instructional material to the students--that is, material which summarizes and describes the resources listed in the bibliography, providing some context, summarising key arguments. Ideally, each section of the reading list or bibliography should have such material.
Class reading list/bibliography software such as Leganto or Tallis allow the teacher to include an introduction for each section of the reading list, and to thus to provide brief topic overviews or instructions for students in a free text box. Such material is anchored to the top of the page, and clearly demarcated from the reading list entries.
This appears not to be possible in Zotero Web Library. Is anyone is aware of any work around?
I have considered using a standalone note item for the introductory / instructional material. The problem with this approach is that the note appears as just another item in the list, so it will not be obvious to the students that it contains material of a different kind. And once the student searches, the note will get lost in the search, inasmuch as there is no way to pin it to the top.
Another way forward may be to use a third party interface to a Zotero Bibliography such as Kerko. Kerko doesn't appear to support this functionality out of the box, but it looks like it could be modified relatively easily to support it.
If anyone is aware of other solutions, I would love to hear about them.
Thank you
James
Has there been any road mapping or exploratory work done on the sort of changes that would be needed across the Zotero system to make this possible?
For lack of a better solution, have you considered any of the following options to make these standalone notes more visible and easily retrievable?
* add a prefix such as _ to the note title, so that it appears first when sorting by title
* create a specific tag for these notes
* create a saved search : combining criteria such as "Document type" and "Tag" with the option "Show only top-level items", or using the criteria "Note" to search the content of the notes (would imply to define a standard phrase note title)
I would be interested by your feedback if you have tried them.
Thanks,
Frédérique
I've thought about and looked into the first two. The third is a great idea, but it seems that the saved searches do not appear on the Web Library. It is possible to do a tag search online, and this becomes available via a dedicated URL, so that is helpful, although integrated use of this might be limited because URLs in notes open in new windows.
There is a Group Description, but I believe this is only shown in search results when searching public groups; it doesn't appear on the actual group page.
I had wondered whether the comments feature would work--when you define a group, there is a checkbox saying 'Enable comments'--but I haven't actually seen where comments can be added.
Another way forward would be to use collections for each section you want in the reading list, and add a note with instructions to that collection, and then add to that collection a subcollection which contains the actual entries.
The problem with the above, and in fact all of these solutions, is that because they are not designed for the job, they will not be particularly intuitive. And when it comes to getting students to engage, I find things work best when the process is extremely clear.
https://tribuneci.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/zotlog-structurer-son-parcours-de-recherche-avec-zotero/
Another obstacle to making Zotero work well for this (in Zotero's current state) is that if you customize the columns that are shown in the main list of publications, any changes you make are not shown to visitors who look at the Group.
Since the defaults are not particularly great--the Creator and Date fields take up way too much space, and the Title doesn't have enough space--this limitation could actually be the deal breaker for my purposes.