Getting Started

The first and most important step is to establish an iLabs account: this account is separate from your Cites email, NetID, or active directory accounts. You start the process by aiming your browser at the iLabs Home <http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/home/>.  On the right side of the page, you'll see a login prompt. Unless you have an iLabs account already, you will need to establish an account by clicking on the "sign up here" link under the login prompt:

The next screen prompts you for your email account: Enter your uiuc account, even if that's not what you use to read your mail, and a password you can remember; re-enter the same password, and then provide your first name and last name in the boxes marked with an asterisk:

After filling in the required information, click the "submit" button. You will be returned to the iLabs front page; in the login box, enter your uiuc account and the password you just created. You will see something like the following:

NOTE: If you forget your password, or for some reason are locked out of your account, follow the instructions given here. You will receive a new password in a message sent to your uiuc account within seconds.

within your class ilab

Your professor decides what kinds of information to provide, and how to display this content, but most class iLabs depend on two kinds of "bricks" (content-bearing modules) for the transfer of files and information, and you need to understand them. The first of these is the Document Center, where files can be uploaded and downloaded by all members of the site; the second is the Inquiry Page, where individual students (or students in a group) author pages showing their research as it develops.

The Document Center
Typically, the instructor uses this area to store important class documents--the syllabus and course policies, details of assignments, additional readings, and so on. But you can upload files to the Document Center, too, using the same techniques you use to attach a file to an email message. The Document Center is public--all members of the iLab site can access its contents.

Inquiry Pages
Typically, you will create an Inquiry Page to store the materials related to your own ethnographic research.

Your instructor will create a brick for student Inquiry Pages: this might be called "Student Inquiry Pages" or something like that (your professor, of course, will provide specific information and guidance on this matter). At the bottom of the brick, you will see a link called "Create Unit": open this link to create your own Inquiry Page.

When you open the link, you'll see a screen with the following boxes:

1. Title: You'll want to provide a title that helps others identify the page at a glance. Something like "Brendan's Page" or "Misha's Inquiry Site" works well: when you include your name, all other members of the site can identify your site quickly.

2. Author: By default, you are entered as an author. Unless your professor tells you differently, you should always add your professor as an author. Your professor will provide her email account; make sure you copy it exactly. If your page is a group project, make sure that you enter the accounts of all group members.

3. "This Unit is private only to the authors": By checking this box, you assure that only the members of the group can change the content of the page. Other members will not be able to edit or comment on your work. While checking this box assures the integrity of your work, it also means that others can't comment on your work in progress.

4. "Receive email when comments are made": Check this box only if you want email notification any time someone comments on the contents of your unit. In the early stages, when you're testing your site and playing with its functions, you may not want to enable this function. As you're further along in your project, however, you may want to change this function to enable email notification of comments.

5. "Keywords": Please leave this box blank at the beginning of the semester. Later, as you develop your research, please add appropriate keywords here: this enables future EOTU students to find your work quickly.

6. "Scope and Location": Please check all boxes that apply.

7. "Course": Please ignore this section.

Remember to click on the "Create Unit" button at the bottom.

inside the inquiry page

After you click the "create Unit" button, you'll see your brand-new, ready-for-action Inquiry Page:

It shows your title and the page's authors. Note that at the top is a link called "Edit Pages": You use this to alter the page's titles, authors, and permissions. In the left-hand column, your page now shows within the "Student Inquiry Pages" brick. Now let's add some content to the page:

Click on the "Add new entry here" button to evoke a text box in which you can type:

You can provide text in several ways: 1) By typing directly within the text box; 2) By using copy-and-paste from a word processing document you had already created; by uploading a file; 4) by combining a file upload with text inserted in the text box. In the example below, I chose the 4th option:

I typed some text in the box, then clicked on "Browse" to find on my hard drive the file I wanted to upload; uploading files to iLabs is just like attaching a file to an email message, as you can see from the screen above. Here's what this portion of my page looks like once I'd completed these steps:

The file I uploaded now shows below the text box. Once I've made an entry on the page, other functions appear as well in the tabs above the text box. Authors of the page can add comments (if you did not check the "private only to the authors" box when you created the page, all members of your iLabs site can comment as well); you can see the history of the entry's creation; you can edit your entry, or upload additional files for the entry; finally, you can delete the entry.

This page is the space within which you will post the majority (perhaps all) of your written work. If you scroll down the page you created, you'll see that the EOTU template groups processes as subsections under broader headings. After the page provides the title and preliminary information, it then asks students to "Evoke" themselves (Who are you? How does your identity influence your project's purpose?); to "Explore" their project (which means to Question, Plan, and Observe); to "Discuss" their work as it progresses; and to "Reflect" on their project (which can lead to links to other, similar investigations, as well as thoughts about the value and meaning of the project). The final box--"Other"--is for entries, notes, anecdotes, and the like that don't fit well anywhere else.

What goes where? That's a good question, since sometimes it's difficult to decide whether a particular piece of thought or writing should be termed questioning or reflecting. In general, the boxes at the top of the page are used for the early stages of a project, and the boxes at the bottom show your thoughts as you're concluding a project. But even this rule of thumb is flimsy--thinking and writing are recursive processes, so we're often observing a new phenomenon even as we're discussing or reflecting on a process we have completed (or think we have completed. As another way of making this point: Your professor may well provide guidelines for the location of various entries, and you should follow these guidelines when they're given, but it's very likely that you will still have some leeway in deciding what goes where. (As a by the way: thinking about what should go where encourages you to think about your own process of creating documents: that's an intentional benefit of the template design.)