FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about Lappiz and the team behind this project.

If you have any questions not answered in this FAQ or further questions or suggestions, please contact us through our feedback form.

General

Lappiz is a collaborative web tool that allows students, especially those in higher education, to share academic content between them. Its purpose is purely educational, providing students universal access to all kinds of documents that might be interesting in a particular area of study. By connecting information, knowledge and educational institutions, Lappiz seeks to stimulate the emerging need to expand the horizons of students, who now want more dynamic ways to enrich their knowledge and to collaborate with peers. No, you can access documents from any educational institution from the navigation bar or, alternatively, through the world map. No, we only offer support via our feedback form. Before you send us message, please confirm that your question is not already answered in this FAQ. No. Participation in Lappiz is free and currently there are no restrictions on the amount of space that students can use to upload their documents. Currently, Lappiz is supported through revenue generated by advertisement. First of all, thank you for your support! The best way to spread Lappiz adoption is by contacting your friends and encouraging them to use Lappiz, asking them to also contribute with their work, notes, etc. You can do it, for example, in your class, your course or across the university where you are attending to.

Interaction

Questions must have a clear objective – you ask something because you expect to obtain a correct answer. Questions may be as simple as confirming exams’ dates or a doubt about a specific exercise. The author of the question may add clarifications, but cannot answer to his own question, and has the right (and duty!) to decide which answer is the most correct one.
Discussions, on the other hand, requires a proper debate, where different ideas and viewpoints meet. There are no restrictions on the matter of discussions, but they must always be in accordance with the area where they are posted into (e.g., university, course or subject). In discussions there are no right or wrong answers, but answers that one may or may not agree with. A resource is a mean used to achieve an end. In Lappiz, this end is, precisely, the academic success. In technological terms, a resource is any document that contains information about a particular subject, contained in a digital file.
From an academic viewpoint, a resource may be, for example, a report, a practical work, a monograph, a series of laboratory results, the source code of a computer program and much more. Therefore, a resource can be considered any document that enables your colleagues to achieve an even greater level of success.

Registration

In the registration page simply provide a valid email address, user name, and your desired password. It is going to be necessary to perform a reset of your current password. To do this, go to the page where you password can be recovered and enter your user name. Then go to the inbox of the email address that you used for registering, and follow the instructions contained therein. You must confirm you entered a valid email address and a user name that does not contain only numbers or does not exceed 16 characters. It is also not allowed to register a user name that already exists.

Academy

The most likely answer is that the university is very recent and, therefore, hasn’t been added to our database yet. It may also have been due to an error during the configuration process. In any case, we would like to encourage you to report your educational institution as missing to quickly have the opportunity to better enjoy Lappiz. Currently Lappiz only has the courses taught in Portugal. Therefore, you must add your course to your university. If, by chance, you think you are able to provide a list of all courses available in your university, please enter in contact with us through our feedback form. Unfortunately we don’t have access to the subjects taught in the different existing educational institutions. Therefore, we would like to encourage our users to help us to adding all missing subjects. Yes! Well, users can’t do it directly from Lappiz, but we have the required tools for it. Please contact us through our feedback form to help us improve Lappiz. From the moment you press "this is my course," all the activity that arises in this course will appear in your dashboard, so you can easily track everything that is happening around it.
Furthermore, when you come back to Lappiz, as soon as you login you will be automatically redirected to the page of your course, accessing thereby all its related content.

Resources

There are no limitations on the type and format of resources you may send. However, you must always obey the applicable copyright, and the content must be always adequate to the subject to which it belongs. You must also select an appropriate category so that students all around the world can more easily find them. No! You can also send resources created by, for example, friends and teachers, provided that copyright is fully met. However, we encourage you to upload your own documents - something that probably no one else will have access to, in addition to trouble-free copyright issues! For more information on this matter, please visit our Copyright section. Tags are keywords that briefly describe a resource. These tags allow a more thorough search of resources, so they can be more easily found.
There is no limit on the number of tags you can add to a resource. However, do not forget that for a more detailed description of the resource, there is a separated field created for this purpose (in free text). No, it is only allowed to add resources to existing subjects. Yes! Lappiz allows you to send a huge number of files simultaneously and you may add/edit them whenever you want. No. After you start a batch upload of files, a virtual queue will be initiated. This queue maintains a list of files uploaded by you but not yet added/edit (with name, description, tags, etc). Until all files are properly edited, they will remain in this virtual queue. This means that you can upload resources using a computer in your university, but add/edit them when you get home (as long as you are always logged in using your personal account). Facebook provides a space on each user profile that allows you to post short messages about your current status. If you're logged in Lappiz with a Facebook account, when you upload a resource an option to publish a message on your Facebook page is shown. Thus, all your friends will then know that you’ve added a new resource to Lappiz, and may stay aware of your continuous contributions in Lappiz!

Dashboard

The list of activities on your dashboard includes all actions and interactions taking place in Lappiz and that are in some way involved with your profile. Examples of activities:

• A friend that you have added to your network of friends.
• A friend of yours who has added a new friend to his network of friends.
• Someone who wrote a comment on a resource posted by you.
• A friend who sent a new resource.

All your actions and interactions, including new resources submitted by you, are automatically followed in your profile. Activities such as comments to your resources, answers to your questions and new messages on a discussion are all examples of activities likely to be listed on your dashboard.
However, you may be interested in following a particular resource or question, even if you have not been its creator. This may prove to be useful, for example, if you're interested in knowing if someone has already answered a question asked by a colleague.

Similarly you may also unfollow content. Due to the large number of actions / interactions in Lappiz, it is likely that you will need to filter such content updates. From this idea, we implemented a series of filters of activities that best help you be aware of the news you want:

• All: the complete list of activities without any filter applied.
• Following: activities related to content you specifically want to follow.
• Subjects: activities resulting in your subjects (if you have them set in your profile).
• Course: updates that occurred in your course.
• Myself: activities undertaken by you, regardless of the university, the course or the subject.

The existing profile in your dashboard contains personal information not likely for you to share it publicly (e.g. your email address). Instead, your public profile shows only a portion of these private fields and also lists the number of resources and questions posted by you, and your network of friends. Clicking in “Academia” will automatically redirect you to your course and its activities will be followed by default. By defining your subjects you are demonstrating interest in receiving all updates that occur in them, which will then be placed under your dashboard subjects’ activities.