OCA Website Guide

Open College of the Arts

Student Support
Introduction
The OCA website has become a more central part of the OCA’s student community than it has ever been previously.

Registering on the website

Click on the word ‘Register’ in the top right section of the homepage.

Now enter the details that are requested on the form. Not all of this information is necessary for you to register, but you can be assured it
is used only by OCA, and is not passed on to be used by any other individual or organisation. Some information may be made available
to your tutor (such as phone number and address) but only after you have had a tutor assigned to you following enrolment.

After clicking ‘Register’ you will either be automatically logged into the OCA website or you will be notified if any of the information you
have entered is not valid or if any information is missing.

Please be sure to make a note of your username and password, but do not disclose them to anybody else.

NOTE - If, at the time of registering as a user/member on the website, you are already an OCA student, please allow 36 hours
for us to update your user permissions to that of a student’s. If you are registering in order to enrol on an OCA course, your user
permissions should also be up-to-date within 36 working hours. If you register or enrol on a Friday, your user permissions should be
up-to-date by 5pm the following Monday. If your permissions are not up-to-date by then, send an e-mail to myself (Paul Vincent -
paulvincent@oca-uk.com) that tells me your student number and website username.

Your Dashboard
Once you are logged in (see ‘Registration’) and your permissions have been updated, click on ‘Dashboard’ in the main navigation bar.

You are now viewing your personal space on the OCA website. From here, you can gain a brief insight into activity on the website that is
relevent to yourself - forum discussions you have taken part in, latest comments made on content within your Portfolio, messages left by
others on your Whiteboard and Resources that are relevant to the course(s) you are enrolled upon.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
 Anatomy of your Dashboard

OCA News and Upcoming Events - These

Edit Profile & Edit Portfolio -
Use these links to edit your profile information (add a picture of yourself,
and select whether people can or can’t see your full name and e-mail
address) and to upload media to your portfolio.
news and events listings show both general
news and events relevant to all students, and
those events and news items that are only
relevant to the courses you are enrolled on e.g.
Focus on Imaging Photography show.

Course resources - here

you will find the three most
recently added resources that
are relevant to your courses.

Latest comments made on

items in your portfolio by
tutors and fellow students. Latest messages left on your
whiteboard by tutors and
students

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
Editing your Profile

Click on ‘Edit Profile’, either on the left of the screen or in the ‘Quick Links’ box of your Dashboard.

You can now upload an image of yourself (or an image you would like to represent you) to the
website, which will be displayed next to comments you make on others’ work and in your portfolio.
Please ensure that the image has an ‘RGB colour space’ and is a jpeg file of approximately 72ppi
width: 55px, height: 73px to ensure the upload is successful. you can also enter a ‘Biography’ of
yourself to introduce yourself to others, and choose whether or not you would like your name and
e-mail address to be visible. If you wish, you can also upload a more detailed CV of yourself to your
profile.

Uploading files to your portfolio

Click on ‘Edit Portfolio’ in the vertical navigation bar on the left. You will now see a page called ‘Choose a Folder to Edit’. Click on the
‘Unsorted’ folder. Click on ‘Add a New File’.

You now have the option to either ‘Upload a file’ from your computer’s hard drive (ensure it has an RGB colour space, and is a jpeg file
less than 2mb in size to ensure a successful upload); include a YouTube video by
pasting in the url from a video in YouTube; include an image from Flickr, by pasting
in its url from Flickr; or include a link to an external website, again, by pasting in its
url. Videos can also be uploaded straight to the OCA website in the same way as
you would upload an image (shown on the next page). After uploading or linking
through to images and other resources, you can add a title, description, medium and
style to the file and also add tags to further describe the work you are uploading.
Tags are also used when entering work for competitions that OCA holds at various
times throughout the year (see the home-page for the current competition). You can
also choose the level of privacy for the work you have uploaded: Public, Community,
or Private. ‘Public’ allows anybody to view the work, ‘Community’ allows anybody
in the same school (e.g. Fine Art) as you to view the work, and ‘Private’ allows only
students and tutors on the same course(s) as you to view the work. Now, you can
place them into folders...

Managing your folders

Click on ‘Manage Folders’ then click on ‘Add a New Folder’, and enter a name for your folder. Now go back to ‘Edit portfolio’, click on
your ‘Unsorted’ album, and click on each of the images that you want to put into your new folder - a black border will appear around
each selected image. Now click on the ‘With selected’ drop down menu and select the folder you would like the files to go into. To check
that the files have gone into the correct folder, click on ‘View Portfolio’ and then click on the folder you created. You should now see the
images that you moved. You can try different ways of organising your files - you may wish to order them according to the content e.g.
‘People’, ‘landscapes’ etc., or by media e.g. ‘Paintings’, ‘Photographs’, ‘Video’, ‘links’ or by course or assignment.
Uploading an image, in pictures
Resources

The resources section of the OCA website contains links to useful websites relevant to individual courses. Some of the resources are
selected by students and tutors of OCA, others are placed there by OCA staff. All resources are checked by an OCA moderator or
administrator before they are made available.

To add a resource...
Go to your Dashboard and, on the left navigation bar, click on the relevant course below the ‘Resources’ header. Now either enter the full
URL (website address), or click on ‘File’ (accepted files include: jpg, gif, png, pdf, mov, doc, txt, rtf and zip ) and browse for the file you
wish to upload as a resource, then enter the title of your resource, and your description of the resource. Click on ‘Submit resource’, and
an OCA moderator will then assess the resource before either approving, or rejecting the resource. We aim to assess resources within 2
working days of the resource being posted.

The OCA forum

How to use the forum
First, you must log onto the website; the login form is on the OCA homepage (oca-uk.com). Now click on ‘Community’ in the grey
horizontal navigation bar. You should see a screen like the one below…

To view all the forums, click on the word ‘Forums’ in the vertical navigation bar on the left of the screen. Clicking on the titles of forums
and discussions takes you into those forums and discussions to view what students and tutors are saying and post replies if necessary.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
Anatomy of an OCA forum
Below, you can see the various elements of an OCA forum page. On the following page, the process of making a post to the forum is
illustrated.

Title of the Page index Subscribe to RSS

forum you Titles of discussions within this forum feed - Click on
are currently this to have new
viewing posts sent to your
RSS reader inbox.

When the
last post was
made in this
discussion.
Whom made the
Number of replies made in
last post
this discussion

Open College of the Arts

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 1 Click on ‘Community’.
2 Then click on ‘Forums’.

3 Then select the

forum you want to
look at.
4 Click on the discussion you want to join or view

5 Make your comments

and click ‘Post Reply’.

The following sequence of screenshots illustrate how to reply to a post on the OCA Forum…

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
To make more advanced posts, you need to know how to use the Forum toolbar:

Links
• Picture links - If there is an image online that you wish to post into the OCA forum, locate the
iomage, right click on it, and select ‘Copy Image Location’. Then click on the image icon in your
post, right click in the grey bar next to ‘src’, select paste. Click the green tick.
• Video links - same as for ‘Picture links’, but instead of right clicking on the video, copy the ‘website
address / URL’ from the browser’s address bar when viewing the video.
• Website link - To create a link to another page on the OCA website, or to another website, first
goto that page in another browser window or browser tab and copy the address from the address
bar. Then, in the forum post, type a description of the website or page e.g. ‘BBC website’ or ‘OCA’s
How to enrol page’, then highlight the text you’ve just typed and click on the ‘Link’ button (the
chain icon). Where it says URL, right click and select paste, then click the green tick.

Paragraph styles
• The first of these adds a horizontal line for dividing the post.
• The second indents a paragraph
• The third makes the highlighted paragraph appear as a quotation

With the second two, first highlight the text and then click on the button. You will not see any changes
until the reply has been posted.

Text formatting
• Bold
• Italic
• Underline
• Strike through
• Reduce text size

Lists
• Numbered lists - type out your list, with each item on its own line, and click the numbered list
button.
• Bullet point lists - Same as above.

Smilies
These are used to get across a particular expression. Some comments e.g. “I like your paintings of
flowers, very pretty!” can have ambiguous meanings when typed out, and can be misconstrued by the
reader as being sarcastic or condescending. Adding a smiley face, for example, can help to put across
your good intentions. Don’t use them too much though, as some people consider them annoying and
childish.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
Using the portfolios
The OCA website has hundreds of student portfolios available to browse through and look at. The portfolios also allow for comments to
be made on students’ work

Type your comment into the grey box, click ‘Submit

‘Comment’, and your comment will be added to
the picture in the person’s portfolio.
Other online resources
The internet has become an excellent resource for a variety of needs. A selection of internet resources are listed below:

Blogs
A blog is just an online diary (a weB LOG). OCA encourages its students
to use a blog as their learning log (also referred to as a ‘learning journal’,
‘listening log’ and ‘log book’), as this allows your tutor to keep track of
the progress you are making, without you having to post your learning log
with each assignment submission. A blog can include images, sound and
video as well as text, and can be shared with your tutor and other students
simply by copying the url (address) and e-mailing it to whoever you want to
view it.

OCA recommends using ‘Blogger’ - www.blogger.com - as this is one of the

easiest to use, and can be accessed through a Google mail (gmail) account.
OCA’s blog can be seen on the right (theoca.blogspot.com).

If you already have a Google e-mail account (Gmail), you can create a blog
through blogger right away. If you don’t have a Google e-mail account, you first need to register at google.com; the process of signing up
for such an account is quite straight forward, and a Gmail account also opens up a range of other options to you, such as Video chat (if
you have a webcam). Instruction on how to create a blog can be found in the following section of this guide.

Research
The internet has become something of a ‘wild west’ of the 21st century. There is a huge amount of information out there, but that
information is not always reliable, as it has often not been vetted by an editor or publisher before being made available. However, the
following sites may be of use to you:
• scribd.com - this website contains a large database of digitised books and research papers on a wide range of subjects. This is a
good place to find classic novels, poetry collections and research papers.
• wikipedia.org - wikipedia is a good place to start when researching artists, photographers, authors and the movements and theories
they are associated with. Wikipedia has been criticised for being an un-policed encyclopaedia (anybody can create or modify a page)
and therefore inaccurate. This is less true now, as it is a heavily moderated resource, but caution should still be employed.
• poetryarchive.org - contains a wealth of poetry examples.
• Gallery websites are a very good place to find examples of artworks and artists. Examples include:
- tate.org
- nationalgallery.org.uk
- moma.org
• youtube.com - careful searches can produce useful results; documentaries and short films are plentiful on Youtube.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
Creating a Blog
This section illustrates how to create a blog to be used as a learning log / logbook / learning journal, using Blogger.com.

1. Sign into blogger.com using your Gmail

(Google mail) login details.

2. You will now be presented with your

Blogger Dashboard. Click on ‘Create a Blog’.

3. Enter the: Title of your blog e.g. ‘Paul’s OCA Learning

Log’; the blog address (this may take time depending on
the availability of your chosen address(es); type the word
displayed. Click ‘Continue’.

4. Select your template (this can be changed at a later time

if you can’t decide right now).

Open College of the Arts

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www.oca-uk.com
 5. That’s your blog created... the next stage is to add content to it.

6. Click ‘New Post’ and you

will see a screen like the
one on the right. All you
have to do is start typing
and then press ‘Publish
Post’ to start off your blog.
You can also add pictures
and video to your blog,
as well as altering the
appearance of text.

7. After publishing your post, click ‘View

Post’ and you should see something like
the screen on the left. You can continue this
process for your entire learning log. All your
tutor needs in order to follow your blog is
the address...
(e.g. http://ocalearninglog.blogspot.com).

If you wish to make your blog more

personalised, you can make many changes
to its appearance through the ‘Layout’ tab.
Click ‘Customise’ in the top-right of the
screen to access the layout.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
 8. In ‘Layout’ you can make changes to the appearance
of your blog by dragging and dropping various elements
around the page to alter the layout. Other changes can
be made by clicking on ‘Edit’ in the various element boxes
and changing the values and information that is contained
inside. To add additional features, you can click on ‘Add
Gadget’...

9. After clicking ‘Add Gadget’, find a gadget that you think looks like it might
be useful and click on the ‘+’ symbol on its right. Then enter any information it
requests, and you will find that it has been added to your blog.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
There are lots of other features within Blogger. The best way to learn how to use it is to experiment with it and see what happens, but
it is generally best to keep it simple and easy to read. There are other blogging facilities on the web that you might prefer over Blogger;
any blog that works well for you is fine. The most important thing is to keep your blog up-to-date so your tutor can monitor your progress
through your course.

Open College of the Arts

0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com
Open College of the Arts
Michael Young Arts Centre
Redbrook Business Park
Wilthorpe Road
Barnsley S75 1JN

enquiries@oca-uk.com
0800 731 2116
www.oca-uk.com