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This guide helps you create a collaborative, student-crowdsourced timeline in Mandala Visuals. John Alexander used this timeline for his course the course he co-taught with Walt Heinecke "Documenting UVaUVA's FuturesFuture." This course, inspired by the ouster and reinstatement of UVa UVA President Teresa Sullivan, documented the event using oral histories. Since many students were not in Charlottesville for the ouster, John Alexander helped them make a collaborative timeline of the proceedings in class, which included links to primary sources. This helped them understand the flow of information surrounding the ouster. Afterward, he shared the timeline with his students, so that they could reference it throughout the semester. To make a crowdsourced timeline:  Create a Google Spreadsheet Enter your data  Format your spreadsheet  Create a collectionLog in to Visuals Create a new visualization Invite student contributions in class Add the visualization to UVaCollab

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Log in with your Netbadge credentials. You'll see the University of Virginia Google Drive page (or the standard Google Drive page if you entered a non-UVa UVA address).

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The default setting restricts sharing to UVA viewers. We need to make a few more changes so anyone with a link can access your data. If you're not using a UVA standard "@gmail.com" Google Drive Accountaccount, simply change Anyone at with the link can view to can edit. Then you can skip ahead to the next section. If you're using a UVA-affiliated account, continue reading. 

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You'll leave the rows themselves blank. In class, each student will add a row to the spreadsheet, creating a single event. Before they can do that, however, you should make sure rows are formatted correctly. 

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3. Format your spreadsheet

The Timeline reference guide has specific data types for each column. Luckily, our example is easy: every column should be in the "plain text" data type.

Now your spreadsheet is ready for student contributions. Next, you can move to Mandala Audio-Video to set up the basic visualization before class begins.

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4.

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Log in to Visuals

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Go to Visuals at https://visuals.shanti.virginia.edu. 

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Column width 50% Column width 50%       Click on the Main Menu icon (  ) in the top right corner. Then, Log in via Netbadge.

 

 Enter your Netbadge credentials to finish logging in. Now we'll make your visualization. To start, you need to create a collection to house it in. 

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Column width 50%  Image Removed Column width 50% Click  Image Removed> Collections > Add New Collection.

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Column width 50% Image Removed  Column width 50%     Enter a title. You can also add a description if you like.

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Column width 50%  Image Removed Column width 50%       Set "Group Visibility" to Public - Accessible To All Site Users. This will let you add the visualization in the collection as a UVaCollab resource later. Then, Save the collection.

Your collection will open. Now you're ready to add your visualization. We'll add it directly from this page. 

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5. Create your timeline 

Make sure to log in before making your timeline. Then

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With your collection open: 

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You'll see a list of your Google Drive accounts. If prompted, log in to the account that holds your data spreadsheet. Google will ask if you give Shanti permission to see your files: click Allow.  You may not have to do the last two stepsteps: you might see your Google Drive files directly.

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We can adjust this scope using "Initial zoom of timeline." Since the value of this field is tricky to determine, we'll create two reference events for the "beginning" and "end" points of our timeline, then adjust the value of "Initial zoom." 

Now go back to the visualizations editor. Adjust the "Initial zoom of timeline" by small increments, increasing the value to zoom out, decreasing the value to zoom in, until you can see the "start" and "end" events at the opposite ends of the timeline.

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Notice the text "start" and "end" are a bit large. Remember, you're going to have to have students recording many events on this timeline. To set the size of the font, we're going to make a column called "importance." 

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Column width 50%   Column width 50%         Now "hide" the column to prevent your students from worrying about this value. Visuals can still read data in hidden columns. To hide column E, select the entire column, then right click on it and choose Hide from the menu.

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7. Add the timeline to UVaCollab

Open Now, we'll add the timeline your students created together to UVaCollab. This lets them reference the data throughout the semester. To begin, open your class site in UVaCollab.

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You'll see a form with metadata fields, where you can add a title and restrict access to your HTML page. Fill out the fields as needed, then Finish. The new page will appear under the Resources. If you click on the site, you'll see the interactive timeline your students created collaboratively. 

This code also lets you add the visualization to a WordPress course site. Follow the Add an iFrame guide for help. 

Now you're finished with your project. To learn more about making visualizations, you can use this Visuals in Mandala guide. 

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