Tuesday, September 18, 2012

New Feature: Subjects

Subjects help categorize notecard sets and books making it much easier to find material to study. They are available for both notecard sets and books. Examples of subjects are math, a&p, us history etc.

To view Notecard Subjects click the Notecards tab and then click the Browse Notecard Subjects link located to the right of the search box.

Similarly, to view Book Subjects click the Books tab and then click the Browse Book Subjects link located to the right of the search box.

When viewing subjects you may of noticed the number to the right of each subject. This represents the number of items that belong to that particular subject. The more items that belong to a subject the more popular it is considered. Subjects can be sorted by Popularity or Name. The default is Popularity.

Subjects can also be filtered by letter or searched. When searching subjects the results will automatically update as you type. Below is a screenshot of a notecard subject search:



Viewing Items that Belong to a Subject

Click a subject to view all items that belong to it. The result will be displayed on the search results page. This allows you to search within a particular subject or subjects. This example searches the history subject for notecards that contain the phrase "civil war".

You can also look in more than 1 subject at a time. This example displays all books that belong to biology OR anatomy & physiology. When there is more than 1 subject they are connected with the keyword OR. This means if you have the subjects math and science results will include items that belong to either math or science or both.

To add a subject when already viewing results simple enter a subject in the "add subject filter" input box and hit ENTER. As you type suggestions will be provided. Below is a screenshot of adding an additional subject:


Adding Your Own Notecard Subjects

Notecard subjects have been around for a while but they were originally called tags. We felt that subjects was a more descriptive word so we have converted all tags to subjects.

When creating or editing a notecard set you can add as many subjects as you'd like as long as the length of all subjects is 256 characters or less. As you type in the input box suggestions will be provided. Although subjects are optional we recommend you add at least 1 subject to help categorize your notecard set.

When you link your notecards to a book it will automatically be added to all of the book's subjects. For example, if link your notecards to a book that has the subject science your notecards will be added to the science subject even if you did not enter any subjects.

Creative Subject Usage

Feel free to use subjects in any way that makes your notecards easier to find. Here are a couple scenarios.

Scenario #1.
You and your classmates want to create and share notecards for a particular class. To make it easy to find these notecards have everyone add their notecards to the same unique subject such as "mrs. robinson's class" or "trinity hs science 2012".

Scenario #2
You want to share a few of your many notecard sets with Tommy Harris. Simple add a unique subject such as "for tommy_h" to the ones you want to share with him so he can easily find them.

I'm sure you can think of other scenarios where subjects can be used in a creative and effective way.

Good Luck With Your Studies!
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