A Quick Start Guide for Brainify

We’ve tried our best to make Brainify very easy to use – even without the need for documentation. However, we don’t always fully succeed at the things we try, so here are some pretty quick tips on what Brainify is about and how to use it. If you want more details, please check out the other Brainify blog postings .

What is Brainify?

(If you already know what Brainify is, skip right down to "The Basics" for how to get started).

Brainify is a site for university and college students. We all know there are a huge number of websites that exist which have information on them that will really help you in the courses you are taking. The problem is finding exactly the right site when you need it. Just as you are unlikely to look for videos using Google (YouTube does a better job because it is tailored specifically to videos), Google is less than perfect when looking for good academic content. Unlike Google, the features of Brainify are tailored specifically to bookmarking and finding academic websites, and to helping students ask questions of, and connect with one another.

To provide you with fast and easy access to exactly the right academic website Brainify uses some pretty common (and some not so common) web 2.0 techniques. Each site that is collected in Brainify is rated, tagged, categorized, described and commented on by other students. You can use those bits of “metadata”, along with Brainify’s search and browse features to find the website that the community says is of high quality and targeted to what you are looking for. You can also create and join groups, and ask questions when you cannot find the answer you need in the websites.

Finally, we intend to make Brainify community members pseudo-owners of Brainify. If Brainify ever changes hands (for example, in the same way that YouTube was sold to Google), then we intend to distribute a portion of the proceeds among the Brainify community members according to their reputation on the site. You reputation is recorded and is affected every time a website you were first to collect is rated, comments you make are rated, questions you answer are rated, users you have brought to the site (recommended) increase their own reputation, people join groups you create, etc.

We want Brainify to become a vibrant academic site where university and college students can find exactly what they are looking for.

The Basics:

Joining Brainify: Brainify is intended for university and college students and their instructors. As such, you need an e-mail address issued to you by a university or college in order to join Brainify.

Bookmark academic websites: Brainify is a place for you to collect (bookmark) web sites that you have found useful in your college or university courses. If you bookmark a website in Brainify, the site is listed in your collection so you can easily return to it, and is also now available to the Brainify community using Brainify’s search and browse features. Any number of people can bookmark the same website in Brainify, but the first one to do so receives special acknowledgement.

Web site metadata: When you bookmark a site, you’ll be asked to tag that site, rate that site, indicate the academic level, create a description for the site, and place the site into the topic hierarchy (see below). These things make it much easier for you and other users to search for the most appropriate sites easily.

Topic hierarchy: Brainify also has the notion of an academic topic (or discipline) hierarchy. This hierarchy is, for the most part, defined by you, the users (often referred to as the community). When you collect a web site, you will be asked to place it into its appropriate location in the hierarchy. Likewise, when you join, you will be asked to indicate what you are studying using that same hierarchy. Finally, when you ask a question, you will be asked to indicate the topic it concerns in order to help others find it. You can browse websites, groups, questions and people (other Brainify users) by academic topic.

Watching things: Brainify has the notion of being able to “watch” things such as collected websites, academic topics, questions, groups and people. If you are watching something, then your events tab will show you anything new that happens to that item so that you are saved from constantly going back and checking items of interest.

Ask questions: If you are stumped, you can ask questions in Brainify. These questions can be answered by other Brainify members. You can browse questions by topic, and events will show you when a new question has been asked in a topic you are watching.

Discuss: Most “things” (collected websites, people, groups, topics, etc) have comment areas associated with them in order to facilitate discussions.

Groups: Any Brainify member can create a group of academic interest. Like individual users, groups can have their own collections of web sites.

Icons: On the top right of most items you will see an icon that lets you watch that item. If the item is a group, the icon let’s you join the group. If the item is a collected website, the icon allows you to add it to your own collection.

Mouse-overs: In many cases, you will find that if you place your mouse over a field on the Brainify site, a little description will appear that tells you a little bit about what that icon or link does.

Reputation: As indicated above, whenever other Brainify members indicate that you have done something meaningful for the community (collected some good website, made a useful comment, answered a question, etc), your reputation number goes up. Your reputation in Brainify is critical because if Brainify ever changes hands, we intend to distribute a portion of the sale proceeds among community members according to their reputation.

Invitations: If you find Brainify useful, please invite other good students to join. The more contributing members Brainify has, the more useful it is. In addition, if they establish a good (high) reputation, your reputation will increase as their inviter.

Brainify blog: It is incredibly important to me that the community of Brainify users has a high level of involvement in terms of the development of Brainify. As such, there is a Brainify blog which describes a lot of the decisions we made and asks for comments to help guide us in future decisions. I invite all of you to join the blog and comment on any topic.

Thanks and best regards - Murray

The Academic World in One Site

OK – perhaps not the world. Let me explain.

One of the features of Brainify that I am most excited about is the idea of a community generated taxonomy of academic sites. I’d like to explain what it is and how it works.

For those of you unaware of the term “taxonomy” – it simply means a “categorization”. We are all familiar with the biological classification taxonomy (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family …). All of life fits somewhere into this taxonomy.

An Academic Taxonomy

Similarly, all academic topics fit into an academic taxonomy. For example, Kinetics might be a subtopic of Physics, and Physics a subtopic of Science. One of the primary goals of Brainify is to produce a populated taxonomy of all the collected academic web sites. The intent of this is to make subject-based browsing of the academic content collected in Brainify particularly effective. Instead of choosing to create a taxonomy, Brainify could have simply used tagging for categorization (resulting in what some call a “folksnomy”). In fact, Brainify does support tagging because it is an outstanding tool for community classification and effective searching. Tagging, however, is inherently flat and does not support hierarchical browsing. Thus we have chosen to support both tagging and the creation of a community-built taxonomy.

The problem in academic taxonomies is that although they are useful, there is no agreement on a single taxonomy. For example, some universities list Computer Science under Science, some under Math, and some under Applied Science. This makes the derivation of an academic taxonomy difficult. And even if there was a standardized taxonomy available (there are, in fact, several - making none of them standardized), deciding where a particular web site fits into that taxonomy could result in a never ending debate.

How Does Brainify Build the Taxonomy?

First of all – Brainify does not build the taxonomy – the community does. When a member finds a useful academic web site and adds it to their Brainify collection, the collector is asked where he or she believes the web site should sit in the taxonomy. He or she traverses the hierarchy and chooses a location. If the collector does not feel that any of the existing sub-categories are appropriate for the site being collected, he or she is even able to create new sub-categories in the taxonomy. Since it is possible that a web site may be collected in Brainify by any number of different collectors, there may be many different locations in the taxonomy where it is placed *.

It is my hope, however, that as sites are collected and categorized, patterns will emerge in terms of their location in the taxonomy. I suspect we will find that even though one site is placed in, say, 10 different locations, a very high percentage of the collectors have chosen to place it in the same single location, and the remainder have placed it uniformly over the remaining 9 locations.

For other collected sites, we might find that some smaller proportion of collectors (say 50%) have placed it in one location, but that another significant portion (say 40%) have placed it in a second location. This, in fact, may be perfectly reasonable because some sites will be applicable to different disciplines. Having the community define the taxonomical location(s) of the web site ensures, I believe, that the community will find content in the place they would expect to look for it. So although we are not defining a single taxonomy where each site is located in exactly one spot, the community is instead creating a browsable hierarchy where academic items of interest are likely to be found exactly where other community members would think to look for them. This is the beauty, I believe, of a community-generated taxonomy. What it may give up in correctness, it gains in utility.

Practical Implications

Since Brainify is just launching, we have not yet encountered the practical implications of our community generated taxonomy (or “multi-onomy” now). However, we can guess at some.

First – I suspect we will find a long collection tail where there are a significant number of meaningless categorizations. For example, although we hope to avoid this through education, it could be that some people will collect a site as “science/assignments/assignment 1”. This might be meaningful to the collector, but not meaningful at all to the remainder of the community. My suspicion is that those kinds of categorizations will be distinguished by lack of agreement. That is, even though there may be a significant percentage of users who categorize meaninglessly, they will each choose their own different meaningless category. So our expectation is that for each collected web site we will find a small number of categories (1-3 or so) chosen by a large majority of collectors, and some larger number of categories each chosen by a very small number of collectors. The latter group can (and should) safely be ignored. Therefore, when browsing a category, Brainify will deferentially display sites where a significant number of users have agreed that the site belongs in that category.

Another potential issue is that the people building the taxonomy will largely be non-experts in their field. As such, it could be that some of the categorizations might not be considered to be the best choices according to discipline experts. I am not overly concerned about this prospect (though that may change with experience). Even though the collectors are non-experts, they are students studying the field and therefore do have a basic, and increasing, knowledge. In addition, the effective place for a site in the hierarchy requires some level of consensus and is not adversely affected by a few inappropriate categorizations. I am a big believer in the power of community and the likelihood that all will come out well in the end – as long as there are enough eyes on it. We are seeing that now in other sites – such as Wikipedia. Although it is not without its problems, the site has turned into an amazing resource – and was built through a community effort.

I am sure there will be other unexpected issues that we have to deal with, as well as other unexpected benefits of this community generated multi-onomy. But if Brainify ever develops the size and kind of community I wish for it, it is possible that one day we will see Brainify provide a categorization of nearly every academic web site that exists. As new ones are created, the community will almost instantly collect them and place them in the taxonomy. What a wonderful resource this could be for students. I have my fingers crossed.

Take care - Murray

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* Note that, for this reason, I don’t really consider Brainify’s taxonomy to be a strict taxonomy. Perhaps, therefore, we should call it something other than a taxonomy – like a “Multi-onomy”

Why do I Think Brainify is Important?

This is really the conjunction of two questions: why do I think Brainify can help in education, and why do I think education is important?

How Do I think Brainify Can Help?

The web now is an amazing educational resource. Universities, companies, professors, students and other individuals publish everything from short presentations of academic topics all the way up to complete and open courses and degree programs. There is no shortage of great sites that can be of help in pretty much any course a student could be taking.

Sometimes, though, there is difficulty in finding the appropriate sites. Google can help tremendously here. But the searches and metadata are not specific to academia and therefore attributes like relevance, domain, academic level and correctness cannot be accommodated in the searches. Likewise, there is no good mechanism that supports the formation of global academic student communities and allows their members to connect, ask questions and learn from one another. One of my goals when I started WebCT was to help in the formation of course-based communities – but we now have an opportunity to remove the course border.

Easy Access to Academic Web Sites

The core of Brainify is the ability for students to build their own collections of academic websites. A by product of adding a site to their collection is that it makes that site searchable within Brainify – allowing others to easily find it and possibly add it to their collection.

When a site is collected, the student is asked to say a few things about the site – to rate it, to tag it, to indicate what academic level it is aimed at, to comment on it, to describe it, etc. These bits of metadata, taken together with those of others who have collected that site, allow Brainify users to perform powerful, focused searches for what is arguably the best available academic content.

In addition, when an item is collected, the student is asked to place that item into an academic discipline hierarchy (or ontology). I will describe the formation and details of this community-based ontology elsewhere, but what this means for the student is (hopefully, eventually) a complete, browsable ontology of all publicly accessible web based academic content. What an amazing resource that would be for students – or for any kind of learner for that matter. I cannot tell you how much the prospect of this excites me.

A Community of Learners

I recall that when I use to travel around the world speaking about WebCT, the idea that students would help each other by way of the bulletin board was met with skepticism. Many other professors felt that students were in it for themselves and one way to help improve their prospects was to avoid improving the prospects of others. Perhaps some students feel this way, but the vast majority do not – and are keen to help and get help.

As such, Brainify is meant to provide a place where a broad student community can form. All the usual things are there – profiles, friends and groups of special academic interest. In addition, there is the ability to “watch” what other users are doing. If there is a respected student in a particular academic discipline, others can watch him or her and see when he or she finds a new bit of content or makes a new comment about some item or topic. In addition, students can ask questions tied to particular academic disciplines. It is hoped that other students will answer and everyone will benefit from the result. We can all learn from one another – all we need is a forum in which to do so.

What Does This Mean for Students?

It means, if Brainify succeeds, that students will have a place that will help them in their studies. If they need a question answered, they are likely to find a resource that will answer it here. If not, they can ask it. No one person or even company could possibly build the kind of collection that I am hoping Brainify becomes. But the global community of students, working together, can.

Why Should We Care About Education?

I hesitate to say much about this here because if you are here you probably already care. But let me give you my reasons for being in this field and caring so much.

I feel that education is at the root of – or at least influences - most of the positive accomplishments we make as a society. Not all, but most. And not only accomplishments – but also attitudes we hold such as tolerance and charity. So anything we can do to make education more effective or more accessible will result in more and better accomplishments and a more community oriented society. If we help one generation of students learn better, learn more, or have better access to learning, then they will become better doctors, scientists, architects, artists and so on. Possibly most importantly, some of them will become better teachers. Those better teachers will, in turn, better educate the next generation of students who will also become better doctors, scientists and so on – including another generation of better teachers. With each successive generation every small incremental improvement we make to education now will be passed along and amplified – improving nearly every aspect of the world. We all have our own reasons to be excited about improving education, but those are mine.

It is my sincere hope that Brainify can do its own small part in helping improve educational experiences and outcomes for students.

Take care - Murray

Brainify? What is that?

This is a question that is difficult to answer in a posting of appropriate length for a blog. So let me lay out the basics here. I will make further postings to try and provide additional details for each of Brainify’s ideas and components.

The Premise:

The premise is this: the web is an amazingly rich academic resource for higher education. Most students mine that resource using Google (and we all love Google – who wouldn’t)? But looking for academic resources using Google is a little like looking for videos using Google. While it is pretty good, it could be better. YouTube (now owned by Google) is a better place to look for videos. In the same way, Brainify is meant to be a better place to look for web sites that apply to the courses you are taking.

Social Bookmarking of Academic Sites:

So the heart of Brainify is all about social bookmarking of web sites useful in an academic setting. All the applicable web 2.0 things are there – bookmarking, rating, tagging, commenting, etc. Imagine coming to the site and being able to find, for example, what the community feels are the best web sites to help you understand recursive descent compilers at the intermediate level (or anything else). I would love to have that kind of information at my fingertips.

Organizational Hierarchy of all Academic Web Sites?

But we also do something a bit more novel. We have built a community-generated taxonomy engine. That simply means that when someone collects (bookmarks) a web site for their own collection, they are also asked to place that site in an academic hierarchy. For example, they may say it is in Science/Physics/Kinetics/… Not everyone might agree that this is the right place – but that is OK – everyone gets their own say. We hope the result ultimately is a complete, community-generated hierarchy of all publicly available web based academic resources. What an amazing resource that would be for students.

Questions, Groups, Watching, Friends …

We learn from each other, and Brainify helps us make the connections to make this possible. For example, we are able to view the collections of other people. Being able to see what other students are doing, saying and collecting is important - we can learn a lot from those peers who we respect. There is also the ability to ask (and answer) questions about any particular topic. There is the ability to create groups of common academic interest – and those groups can also collect web sites, discuss, etc. We have the ability to “watch” things like groups, discussions, academic categories, questions, and even other users so we are alerted when something of interest transpires. And of course we have friends lists – people who we connect with regularly. So Brainify is a very social site (in an academic way) as we are meant to learn from one another.

Seems Odd But – Maybe You Can Own Brainify Too?

Well – not exactly. But kind of. It has always seemed odd to me that when social sites like YouTube sell, the only people who benefit are the ones that founded it or invested in it (no offense meant to Google or the founders of YouTube). Not that they shouldn't benefit – they took huge risks and dedicated some portion of their lives to making it a success. But what about the small individual contributions to the site made by the community members? The sum of those contributions can be huge and it is critical for success.

I have thought about this a lot. The outcome is that if Brainify ever succeeds and sells, we intend to share 30% of the proceeds with those members of the community who have helped build Brainify by bookmarking useful new web sites, recommending other users, answering questions, making useful comments – etc. Anything that the community finds to be of value. And we intend to divide that 30% among the members according to their reputation in Brainify. This topic alone could (and I hope will) be discussed a lot, but that is the general idea. You can read more about it at Brainify's Pseudo-Community Ownership (PCO).

When that idea first occurred to me, it bothered me a bit. It seemed a little too overtly commercial for an academic site. But the more I considered it, the more I fell in love with the idea. First – it just seemed like the right thing to do. Some might argue that 30% should be 50%, 75% or 100% - and they may be right or wrong. But 30% is where I got to – and am happy to talk about that in another posting if people want to hear it.

In addition to being “right” (in my opinion – maybe not yours), it also directly increases the chances of the community taking off – which is good for everyone. You know – communities like this are never interesting until there are a lot of people in them, and people don’t bother to come until they are interesting. We have a bit of a chicken and egg problem. But asking the community to become pseudo-partners gives some people a reason to come here while the site is still bootstrapping. If I am the first person to bookmark a really useful site, it will greatly increase my reputation (making me more of a pseudo-partner), and at the same time provide a resource of value to future visitors. It is an experiment, but one I have come to believe is worth trying.


Wrapping it up …

In fact, Brainify itself is an experiment. It is one I believe in. I can’t help but think that if we manage to build a large community here, it will be an incredible resource for students. That is what I want. There are so many things that could stop it from succeeding, but I feel in my heart it is worth a try. The chances of a big success might be small, but the value of a vibrant academic site to the world population of students could be huge. So I am working on it, investing my time and money, and lying awake at night getting excited about it.

I hope you love it.

Thanks and take care - Murray

P.S. - We launched our beta on January 20, 2009!! It is ready to go for you to collect bookmarks. Please join up and give us your feedback.