What is Caucus?

Caucus is a tool, based on the web, that is designed to facilitate collaboration and conversation among groups of people. Using it is just like browsing a web site, but it allows you to respond to the material contributed by other participants. Caucus has a number of possible curricular uses:

• As a place to continue and expand on classroom discussion;
• As a tool for questions and answers between faculty and students;
• As a place for students to collaborate on group projects;
• As a way for students to comment on each other's work;
• As a place to present material and collect responses to it;

and other possibilities that you can dream up. Your computing coordinator can tell you about and demonstrate particular uses that other faculty have found for Caucus.

Who uses Caucus?

Caucus is used by students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Because Caucus hosts conversations on non-academic topics as well, many students are already accustomed to using it and to checking regularly for new material. Unlike a standard web page, however, participation is limited to people associated with the Carleton community, so even a "public" discussion is not open to the entire world.

How is Caucus organized?

Caucus discussions are organized into areas called conferences, which can contain many different threads of conversation or collaboration. Each conference is a self-contained space, and you can restrict access to a small group of people or leave it open to the entire community. You can change many aspects of how your conference looks and behaves to create the environment that works best for your needs. For instance, you can allow participants to start new discussions, or you can reserve that right to yourself. You can allow anonymous responses or require that all contributions be associated with a person's real identity.

What kinds of material does Caucus support?

Since Caucus is based on the web, it supports all of the formats that a web page does: plain text, formatted text, images, multimedia, etc. If you wish, you can control what kinds of materials participants in a conference can use -- restricting them to plain text, for instance. Caucus also supports the same range of foreign languages that can appear on web pages, including Chinese and Japanese. In addition, Caucus has a function to allow you to upload files of any type for participants in a conference to download and view on their own computers; for instance, you can upload a Microsoft Word file for your students to download and work with.

How do I get started with Caucus?

The best way to learn about Caucus is to try it out. There are several hundred public conferences on a wide range of topics; just join a few and see the different ways that Caucus is used. Many course-related conferences are open to view, so you can see how they have been used to extend the classroom experience.

To use Caucus, direct your web browser to

http://caucus.carleton.edu/

Log in with your Netware username and password. On your first visit, you'll be asked for a little information, and offered the chance to take a brief tour of Caucus. If you have a few minutes, the tour is a good introduction to some of the basic features and functions of the software.

If you skip or complete the tour, you're reach the main Caucus page, called the Caucus Center. From here you can view a list of all of the public conferences, create your own conference, or track new material in conferences that you've chosen to follow.

If you have questions about using Caucus, or setting up a conference for a class, contact your computing coordinator for assistance.