Create a Reading Group
Sign Up
First, make sure that you have signed up for a CUNY Manifold account.
Log In
Go to cuny.manifoldapp.org and log in to your account by clicking on the profile icon located in the top right corner of your screen.
A new screen will appear, enter the email and password you used to create your Manifold account and click the “Log in” button or use your Google or Twitter credentials to log in.
You are now logged in and will then be taken back to the main screen.
Reading Groups Home Page
Select “Reading Groups” from the top menu on the Manifold main page or click on the profile icon, located in the top right corner, and select “My Reading Groups” from the dropdown menu.
You will now be on the Reading Groups home page.
- If you used the Reading Groups link, you will see two tabs: My Reading Groups and Public Reading Groups. Click on the My Reading Groups tab.
- If you used the profile icon and dropdown item My Reading Groups, you will be in the My Reading Groups tab.
Create A Reading Group
Click on either “CREATE A NEW GROUP” button.
A “New Reading Group”drawer will open from the right. Fill out each field to define the details of your new reading group: Group Name, Privacy, Invitation Code, Invitation URL, Course, and Notifications.
Group Name
A group name is required to create a new reading group; however, the name can be modified at any time.
Privacy
Groups have three privacy options—public, private, and anonymous—that function along the following lines:
- Public - Annotations and highlights made in public groups are viewable to everyone—even to readers who have not signed up for an account on the CUNY Manifold instance—but only group members are able to leave annotations and highlights under the auspices of the group. Annotations made in public groups can be used by instructors to guide classroom conversation across sections, as a means to enhance/transform texts into scholarly editions, to organize engagement around public happenings occurring on campus or at a particular institution.
- Private - Annotations and highlights made in private groups are only visible to other members of the group. Private groups can be employed in the classroom setting as a means to facilitate discussion among specific students in a safe environment, without concern of unaffiliated members interrupting the flow and dynamic of that space.
- Anonymous - Like Private groups, only fellow group members can see those annotations and highlights that have been committed to the group. Additionally the identities of group members are masked from one another—save the group Creator and Moderator(s)—allowing for Texts to be peer-reviewed in the system.
Invitation Code
The invitation code serves as a key to accessing a group. The code supplied in this field is automatically generated by Manifold upon the group’s creation, and it can be modified or swapped out entirely for a manually input key that may be more pertinent or meaningful.
The code can be shared with those intended to be part of the group—via email, text, etc.—and recipients can input it on the Manage Reading Groups Page to join the group:
Clicking the Regenerate button on the right will create a new invitation code for the group, rendering the previous access code inactive, though users who joined the group previously with an old code will still be members of the group.
Invitation URL
An alternative means for readers to join a group is by way of the Invitation URL, which can be sent out via email or included on a classroom homepage. Readers who click on this link—whose value is determined, in part, by the active Invitation Code value–will be taken to the Manifold instance and asked to confirm their intent to join the group.
Readers who aren’t logged in or don’t have an account on the instance will receive an error message when they click the link, indicating they don’t have permission to access the group. Once they log in or create their account the page will resolve to the group confirmation prompt.
Invitation Security
Security around the reading group invitation system is presently “soft.” If a group moderator selects an invitation code already in use they will be alerted that the code is already taken.
To ensure other moderators do not intrude on your group, we suggest employing an invitation code not easily guessed by others and enabling notifications, discussed in the next section.
Course
Selecting yes will give you the option to add start and end dates to your Reading Group.
Notifications
When the Notifications field is checked, Manifold will alert the group moderator via email when someone joins the group. This can be used as a guard to ensure only those readers targeted for the group become members.
Your Reading Group Home Page
You will now be on your Reading Group home page which contains three section blocks: Home, Notes + Comments, and Members tabs, Manage Group block, and Added Content block.
Home
This is the landing page for your Reading group.
Notes + Comments
This is a list of all Notes (annotations, comments, and highlights) created by the group. You may select an individual Text from the dropdown list to show just the Notes associated with that Text to sort for work done on specific Texts and by specific members. Thus, if you are curious to see what everyone has thought of a specific Text, you can select that Text from the All Texts dropdown. If you want to see what only a particular group member thought about it, you would adjust both the All Texts and All Members dropdowns.or All Members dropdown menu. The All Members dropdown list shows all members of the group and may be used to see the Notes of a specific member. Both dropdown menus may be used together to create a custom view of Note entries. Selecting Reset Filters, located below the All Members box, will return the user to the full list of Notes.
Members
This is a detailed list of all group members including: Member Name, Role, Activity, Note Style (annotation style: dashed, dotted, solid, wavy), and Actions. Selecting a Member Name will open a view of all the member's annotations and comments.
Selecting the Edit button will open a drawer from the right where you can delete or edit a group member's details with the addition of adding a label to describe a specific member that will be displayed next to their name in the membership list.
The Remove button will remove a member from the group, you will be prompted to confirm this action. Removing a member from the group will not delete their annotations from the group.
Manage Group Block
The Manage Group block allows you to edit the Home page of your group. There is a slider that you can toggle on/off and an Edit Settings button.
Added Content Block
Added content (Projects, Texts, Text Sections, Resource Collections, and Resources) from Manifold, will be displayed in blocks with corresponding names and information about each item contained in the block.
Clicking on an item from any of the blocks will open that item in the original Project from which it was added. Added content can be managed by editing the home page.
Manage Your Content
Toggling the slider on from the Manage Group block will bring you to the Edit Home Page screen. Toggling the slider off will return you to the Reading Group's home page.
With the slider toggled on, select the Add Content button and a window opens where you can search for content on Manifold by keyword and type. You have the option to narrow your search results by checking or unchecking the boxes: Everything, Projects, Resources, Texts, and Full Texts.
From your search results list, add content to your group by selecting the star Add icon to the right of the item title. You will be presented with a list of all Reading Groups with which you are a member, select the Reading Group name where you would like the item to be added. Selecting Close will return you to the Add Content window where you will see the selected item now has a highlighted star, indicating that the item has been added to this Reading Group.
By default all content added to a Reading Group is placed in a content block titled Uncategorized. When you are finished, selecting the Close button will return you to the Edit Home Page screen.
Create A New Category
Added content can be curated into custom category blocks by entering a category name in the field and selecting the Add button.
Each added category will become its own content block on your Reading Group home page and contains subcategory sections for: Projects, Journal Issues, Texts, Text Sections, Resource Collections, and Resources. Category content blocks can be modified by selecting the trashcan icon to delete, the pencil icon to edit category name and description, and the double bars to drag the block to a new position on the page.
Items within each of these subcategories can be deleted from the Reading Group (it will only be deleted from the group not the Manifold instance) by selecting Remove or moved to the same subcategory section in another category content block by selecting the double bars and dragging it to that category, i.e. Projects to Projects, Texts to Texts.
Add Content To Your Reading Group
Alternatively, you can add content to your group by selecting either the Browse Library or Search by Keyword button.
Once you find the content you wish to add to your group, simply click on the star icon, see examples below on where to look for the star icon, and then add it to a specific Reading Group by selecting it from the list.
Project
Text
Text Section
Resource Collection
Resource
To learn more about Manifold Reading Groups, see: https://manifoldscholar.github.io/manifold-docusaurus/docs/using/reading_groups