What is it?

CarlSites is a service for students, faculty, and staff to create a digital presence through the use of academic websites. With CarlSites, our college community can think critically of their individual digital identities and web literacy while providing another form for excellence in learning, teaching and scholarship.

Not sure if CarlSites is the right tool for your website? Please consult the Carleton Website/Content Governance Guidelines, where various website types are broken down by level of responsibility, support and branding requirements. This guideline also includes a section about Websites for Faculty, Research Labs, Courses, and Projects.

Why is it useful?

CarlSites offers you the ability to build an ePortfolio, blog about an international experience, curate a collection of digital objects, and promote your work to an audience beyond the class or college community. In addition, CarlSites can complement traditional assignments through the lens of writing for the web, developing an increased level of digital and information literacy.

Popular Applications

Once you have decided to work in CarlSites, you have the additional option of choosing which web application best fits your needs. Below are just a few examples of the types of applications available in CarlSites.

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) originally developed to host blogs but has now evolved into one of the most popular, full-featured website design platforms. Its user-friendly interface and in-depth customization is perfect for anything from small, individual ePortfolios to institutional websites world-wide.

Omeka

Omeka has two applications: Omeka Classic and Omeka S, which are both open-source web publishing platforms for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits. Omeka Classic is used to host a single project that can be contributed by multiple users while Omeka S is used to host multiple projects pulling from the same repository of items. Omeka is perfect for creating digital versions of physical items, online repositories of student work, or exhibitions of cultural heritage objects.

Scalar

Scalar is an authoring and publishing platform that’s designed to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online. The platform provides you with tools to structure book-length works in ways that take advantage of the unique capabilities of digital writing, including nested, recursive, and non-linear formats. This application is perfect for leveraging online content in an interactive and engaging format.

How Do I Use CarlSites at Carleton?

You can request a website in CarlSites by completing this interest form. The Academic Technology team is available for consultation and support as you begin planning, designing, and organizing online content that aligns with your research and pedagogical goals. Have questions? Submit a ticket by emailing at@carleton.edu or contact Em Palencia for more information.

Examples from Carleton

Teaching Tips

  • Focus on the content, not the technology. Students should be aware of the purpose of their assignments before posting in any online forum. Additionally, students find it easier to publish their work on the web once their work has been curated offline
  • If you do not want to share your or your students’ work to the world wide web, you can add a layer of privacy to your website. Please contact Em Palencia for more information.
  • Communicate clear expectations: clear, concise learning goals and measurable outcomes help provide scaffolding for student academic growth
  • Build community – a shared sense of purpose can help students become invested in their content.

CARE Strategies

Need a quick example or description of how one of our tools can be viewed through CARE?

Not sure what CARE is? Please see this blog post on CARE for more information.

Community: Build a website to share and showcase classroom work to foster a sense of classroom pride, or build connections between your projects with the outside world.

Agency: To complete an assignment, students may be able to present a poster, or build a website with WordPress to display their knowledge and enthusiasm for a topic.

Representation: The sites you build can display works from a diverse range of backgrounds in your field, create a space for anonymous engagement for those who might hesitate to speak up in class due to fear of conforming stereotypes, communicate high standards for all students and that you believe in every student’s ability to meet these standards, and/or even create a space to educate about stereotype threat, and include resources and strategies for recognizing it and resisting its influence.

Equal Access: Sites can sometimes be more accessible to online translation software, providing the opportunity for your information to be translated and made available in many languages so that more people can easily engage with your materials.