As a Reader, you can join and create as many Reading Groups as you wish! These are especially helpful for courses, study groups, or even shared interest book groups. Readers can join a Reading Group through an invitation URL or by inputting an invitation in the Manage Reading Groups page. It is important for Readers to specify which Reading Group they are working in when adding annotations or highlights to a Text.
This section will provide a basic introduction to creating and joining Reading Groups. For further documentation on the features and capabilities of Reading Groups, we recommend the Manifold Documentation on Reading Groups.
To see your Reading Groups, Select “Reading Groups” from the top menu on the NYU 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 can select from My Reading Groups and Public Reading Groups.
To join a Reading Group using an invitation code, navigate to the My Reading Groups page. At the bottom of this page, you will see a field asking you to enter a code (provided by your Reading Group moderator) in order to join a group. Enter the group and select “Join”; your new Reading Group will now appear on this page!
Each Reading Group has its own homepage with three blocks: Content, Notes and Comments, and Members.
- In the Content Blocks, you can add materials for your Reading Group from across all of NYU Manifold that you have access to. This includes Projects, Texts, Resources, and more! This content will be displayed in blocks with corresponding names and information about each item, and you can create customized groupings of this content within the Reading Group homepage. 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. You can add content to your group by selecting either the Browse Library or Search by Keyword button from the Reading Group page if you are a Moderator or the Creator of the group. You can also add content to your group by searching for materials directly in NYU Manifold. Once you find the content you wish to add to your Reading Group, simply click on the star icon on that content’s page, and then specify the Reading Group you would like to add it to.
- The Notes + Comments Blocks provides 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 the Notes associated with that Text to sort for work done on specific Texts and by specific members. For example, if you are curious to see what groups members have thought of a specific Text, you can select that Text from the “All Texts” dropdown.
- The Members Block 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 allows you to view all the member's annotations and comments. Moderators can remove members from the group in this block, and will be prompted to confirm this action. Note that removing a member from the group does not delete their annotations from the Reading Group.
To create a new Reading Group, click on the My Reading Groups tab. Reading Groups have three privacy options—public, private, and anonymous. There are further features you can enable or disable in a Reading Group (which you can read about more in the Manifold Documentation), but for now, we will discuss these three kinds of Reading Groups.
- Public groups have annotations and highlights viewable to everyone—even to readers who have not signed up for an account on the NYU Manifold instance—but only group members are able to leave annotations and highlights. Annotations made in public groups can be useful for instructors to guide classroom conversation across sections, as a means to enhance/transform texts into scholarly editions, or to organize engagement around public happenings occurring at NYU.
- Private groups, with their highlights and annotations, are only visible to other members of the group. Private groups are useful in a classroom setting as a means to facilitate discussion among students in a safe environment, without concern of unaffiliated members interrupting the flow and dynamic of that space.
- Anonymous groups, like Private groups, have annotations and highlights visible only to fellow group members. Additionally, the identities of group members are masked from one another—except for the group Creator and Moderator(s)—allowing for Texts to be peer-reviewed in the system anonymously.
