The material here seems too detailed or specific for what I need. Where can I get a simple introduction to a topic that gives me an overview of the issues?
Try the Learn About Guides, which are designed to do exactly this.
How can I make sure that my material is only seen by people it should be?
Make sure you choose the right option under ‘Who can view this’ when you publish your material. You can alter this setting at any time by editing your document or workspace.
The KN’s security system ensures that documents and workspaces can only be seen by people who match the settings you put on those documents and workspaces.
Why is there so much incomplete and out-of-date material in the KN?
The KN is intended to support collaboration and works-in-progress. Allowing everyone the freedom to publish means that inevitably some material is better quality and more up to date than others.
To find more recent material, try an Advanced Search restricted by date, or browse by date.
There are other places which do the job of filtering material for quality: for instance, research journals, University papers, and IET course material are very good, relevant sources of detailed material, and the Learn About Guides are quality-assured introductory pieces.
Filtering the whole of the vast corpus of KN material would be a huge job, and would duplicate the effort that goes in to those other places.
I’ve just published a document but can’t find it in the search. Why?
Unfortunately, the search index is only updated overnight, so your document won’t show up in search results until tomorrow. In the mean time, you can still find it in other places – e.g. in My Documents in My KN, in the Recently published list from the home page, or by going to Browse and finding it by author or title.
I made a document world-accessible, but when I sent the URL to a colleague outside the OU they couldn’t get it. What should I do?
You need to send them the public URL for the document. You’ll find this by following the 'Document statistics' link on the page for your document.
There are two ‘faces’ to the KN: the OU site, and the public site. The OU site requires you to sign in with your OUCU. (This can happen automatically if you are already logged in to your PC at the OU.) This enables the KN to know who you are, and work out what you can and can’t have access to. Unfortunately, for security reasons, we have to have a separate site for people who don’t have an OU Computer Username – this is the public site. This enables the world to see KN material that is set to be world-accessible without having to log in.
There used to be a lot more metadata on the ‘publish document’ page. Where’s it gone?
We found that people were being put off by the long form, and the extra metadata was not being used in practice. So we trimmed it down to the bare minimum.
The data is still there safely in the database! And you can add or change the extended metadata when you edit a document you’ve already published.
Why is there a blank picture next to my name?
How do I upload a new photo?
If you’ve never uploaded a picture of yourself to the KN, a blank default figure will be used next to your name until you do.
To upload a picture, go to My Profile (part of My KN), and click on Edit Profile. There you’ll find options to upload new photos and choose which photo you want the KN to use.
What’s a KN-powered site?
A KN-powered website is one that uses KN technology behind the scenes. Typically the site won’t look like the KN, but the database behind it is the same. This can mean that material on a KN-powered site can be found on that site and in the KN itself.
Examples of KN-powered sites are the IET Student Statistics site, the Reusable Educational Software Library, the Humanities and Arts Higher Education Network, and the IET websites.
We can set up a KN-powered website for you and your project if it’s appropriate. Just get in touch with the KN Team.