This document discusses plans to enhance the groups feature on the Open Education Europa portal. Currently, groups allow users to create online communities to share educational resources. The portal owners want to improve groups by streamlining the creation process, adding notifications, and making it easier to share content with groups. Upcoming changes will transform groups into more dynamic discussion forums through microblogging. New communication tools like improved social media integration and messaging systems will enhance peer networking. The overall goal is to enhance the usability of groups to better serve users' needs. Feedback is requested to help achieve this goal.

1. Open Education Europa
Groups: A New Vision

2. What is this about?
One of the central features of the Open
Education Europa portal is the groups section.
Groups offer a virtual collaborative space for
co-creation, sharing ideas and engaging in
thematic discussions over a specific
educational issue.
Groups are for YOU, and we want to make sure
they serve your needs. So we want to hear
your views..

3. How does it work currently?
A group allows you to create and manage an online
community of peers and experts, where you can share the
portal content-related items, meaning:
● Courses
● MOOCs
● Resources
● Institutions
● Blogs
● Events
● Articles
● Projects
● News
+ embedding tweets

4. What next?
In the next few months, we will enhance the
group functionality:
● Streamline the process of creating and
managing a group.
● Provide options for powerful integration with
social media.
● Add mechanisms for notifications on group
activity.
● Improve navigation and make it easier for
members to share items with their groups.

5. A peek into the future ...
The following slides present some mock-ups of
the planned new user interface for groups.

6. The
Group's
home
page.
Please ignore the
banner image - we
will have a less
offensive one.

7. Which new features
are we thinking of?

8. Move from a
content-related
based groups to a
dynamic forum, by
including a micro-
blogging mechanism
of discussion

9. Improving Peer
networking, by
including new
communication
tools (i.e. social
media
integration,
messaging
system, etc,.)

10. Enhance the groups’ usability
in general

11. Help us make OEE
groups work for you!
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Please use our feedback form:
https://goo.gl/5fdcoR