The backend: Registration and members area (dashboard)
Basically, a DAPP is a website where lecturers have accounts as authors on the website. Anybody that wishes to use the website must be registered with an author account. Registration is carried out by the DAPP System Administrator (SysAdmin) who would be trained for free as part of the project.
After registration, the Lecturer is able to login to the website. The SysAdmin also gives him a unique web address to his e-portfolio. This address will be of the form www.universitydapp.com/author/lecturername e.g. www.unibendapp.com/author/boseojo
Once logged in, the lecturer is taken to a member area. This area is known as the dashboard (i.e. a place from where he can monitor and manage his portfolio, just like the dashboard of a car). The dashboard contains links and buttons for managing his e-portfolio.
From the dashboard a registered lecturer can, amongst several other things:
- Compose and publish any write up: Even if he cannot complete the composition during the current login session, he can save it as a draft to be worked upon at a future date. In addition, he can set up completed write ups to be published automatically at a future date.
- View and manage their e-portfolio: The e-portfolio is a page that displays all the write-ups that have been published by a particular author/lecturer. Authors can add, edit and delete already published write ups.
- Create and manage their e-profile: The e-profile is like a short professional bio/description of the author which is appended to every write up published by him. This profile may include information such as qualifications and specialties.
- View and manage the comments that were left on their articles. Authors can edit or delete comments left by other people. This is an innovative way of controlling inappropriate language and comments. Alternatively, they can turn off commenting on individual articles.
- View the main DAPP website and make comments on other similarly published works.
