Introduction

Is it better to have the wrong answers to the right question than the right answer to the wrong questions?

Open education courses hosted by WikiEducator and the OER university network encourage community-based approaches for peer-learning support. Many courses use ask.OERu.org which is an online community-based question and answer forum based on the Open Source Askbot software. The purpose of ask.OERu.org is to build a database of questions and answers to support OERu learners.

Think of ask.OERu.org as a community garden - a piece of land gardened by our learners and community volunteers for the benefit of all. You can plant new additions to our garden by asking new questions. You can help maintain our garden by improving answers. You can contribute to a sense of community by voting on the questions and answers you like or find particularly useful. You can help weed out and prune poor performing or unwanted plants by voting down weak answers or flagging unwanted contributions.

This tutorial provides an overview to help you get started with ask.OERu.org. Community participation involves activities like asking questions, contributing answers, voting on questions and answers, and providing comments. Contributors earn points ("karma") and badges for useful participation in the community.

Objectives

This tutorial provides an introduction to the basic skills you need to use ask.OERu.org, including: How to create an account Completing your profile and earning your first badge How to find answers for your courses How to ask questions relating to your courses Information on how you earn karma points and badges thus increasing your community kudos.