Learner Tools
EdX
Hopefully you are viewing this site with EdX. If not, you will need to go to this page to register with EdX. Once you have an account, you will need to register for this course by visiting the official LINK5.10x page.
Email Updates
Main course updates will be sent out via email. You will automatically be sent these email updates that contain course information as well as highlights from the social networks of course learners. For those that also sign up for ProSolo, you may receive duplicate emails – one from EdX and ProSolo. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Quick Helper
At any point during within the EdX course, if you need help with an issue, look for the “Quick Helper” heading. Enter your question in the discussion forum under that heading and Quick Helper will contact other learners that can help you answer your question.
BAZAAR
This is a community reflection tool that will allow you to connect with other learners in real time to work on a problem related to course content. When you encounter a link in the content for this, you can click on that link to be placed with another learner that is ready to work together to complete the exercise.
Twitter will generally be used to connect with other learners and share course-related information. If you need a Twitter account, you can create one here and read more about using Twitter here. Additionally, you can follow the DALMOOC official Twitter account. Please use the hashtag #dalmooc when tweeting about the course.
ProSolo
ProSolo is a social competency based software that will give you the opportunity to identify learning goals, connect with others around shared goals, and create a pathway for recognition of learning. Additionally, ProSolo will allow you to create a learner profile so that you can find other learners with shared interests. You can find sign up for ProSolo here.
Blogging
Another method to connect with others in the course is through blogging. If you are using the social learning path, your blog will be the place for you to complete assignments from the assignment bank as well as comment on other learners’ work. You can create a blog through services such as WordPress, use an existing blog, or even create your own website through services like Reclaim Hosting.
Facebook Page
We have created an official Facebook Page to use with this course. You can get course information on this page or connect with other participants.
Google+ Page
Not into Facebook? Maybe you prefer Google+? You can use our official Google+ Page.
Assignment Bank
For those that wish to dig deeper into weekly topics, we have provided a bank of assignments for you to choose. These are divided by week and rated by difficulty. Once you choose to work on an assignment, you can come back to the assignment bank to submit your work and then place a link in ProSolo for feedback from people you are working with.
ANALYTICS TOOLS
Tableau
Tableau Software is designed to help anyone see and understand their data. Tableau can connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click. For this course, you have been provided a special key to download and use Tableau free for the duration of the course – just follow these directions:
- Visit http://tableausoftware.com/edxanalytics
- Fill out the form on that page (click “Get Started”) to download Tableau Desktop
- A download of Tableau Desktop will start for Mac or PC, whichever is appropriate for the computer the you are on
- Once you install Tableau, you will be prompted for a product key
- Enter TDEQ-DCD0-81F0-D61E-C2BD when prompted – this key is valid until January 20, 2015
- Start using Tableau!
Gephi
Gephi is an open-source and free that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs. You can find download and installation instructions on their website.
Special note: If you are running Gephi and RapidMiner on the same machine, please see these instructions:
Windows
- Make sure you have the latest version of JAVA runtime installed
- Then install Gephi
- Open Gephi and try to open the Les Miserables.gexf sample
- If you see a picture you are good to go, if not:
- If you see a grey window with no picture, go windows -> graph and open the graph window
- If no menus are working uninstall everything and try again
- If it doesn’t work a second time, look and/or ask for a solution on the Gephi forum. Also, you may ask for assistance on the edX discussion forums, social media (Twitter and Pro Solo), and QuickHelper.
Mac
- Install the latest version of JAVA
- Re-install JAVA through the Mac site (don’t ask me why you need to do this twice, it is some kind of magic)
- Then install Gephi
- Open Gephi and try to open the Les Miserables.gexf sample
- If you see a picture you are good to go, if not:
- If you see a grey window with no picture, go windows -> graph and open the graph window
- If no menus are working uninstall everything and try again.
- If it doesn’t work a second time, look and/or ask for a solution on the Gephi forum. Also, you may ask for assistance on the edX discussion forums, social media (Twitter and Pro Solo), and QuickHelper.
RapidMiner
RapidMiner is a data mining program that is available as a stand-alone application for data analysis and as a data mining engine. There are several version of RapidMiner online – for this course, you will be using RapidMiner 5.3. See this page to download RapidMiner 5.3.
Special note: If you are running Gephi and RapidMiner on the same machine, please see these instructions:
On newer Mac computers RapidMiner and Gephi may use different versions of Java – they cannot work simultaneously. If you install RapidMiner and it gives you a warning that Java is not installed (and you know it is) you will need to completely uninstall and delete Java 1.7 and install Java 1.6.
LightSide
LightSide is an open source text mining and machine learning tool. You can download a version that uses Java from their website. If you do not have Java enabled or wish to avoid using Java for whatever reason, there is also a Java free version for download.