Frequently Asked Questions

If you are a new DAU Community Owner or Leader, you must complete the content approver training (PDC 100), plus any required training workshops, before beginning your new duties. The content approver training ensures you know DAU's policy and governance, content types, copyright laws, and Section 508 requirements. The training workshops ensure that you know how to add, edit, or delete content within the DAU software environment.

If you do not have a DAU ID number, or if you obtained one prior to 2020, then navigate to https://saar.dau.edu and follow the steps listed. For “System Association,” select DAU Homepage (Knowledge Sharing) to access the Communities of Practice. Once you submit the SAAR form, you should receive an activation email within 24 hours.

After receiving the activation email, you will need to complete the PDC 100 course. If you are a DAU staff or faculty member, you can access the course directly on Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD). If you are external to DAU, then please send us ([email protected]) your name, email address, and DAU ID number, along with the name of the community for which you’ll be serving as a leader, so that we can get you registered to take the course.

Upon successfully completing the course, you will need to send the following documents to [email protected] so that we may add you as a Community Leader:

1. Download and forward the Certificate of Completion for PDC 100.
2. Sign and forward the Notice and Consent Statement for Public Release Authority form, with the additional necessary signatures on it.

Many community leaders have inquired whether they can post copyrighted material to their CoPs. The policy for DAU's communities has always been that, to post copyrighted documents, you must have permission in writing from the copyright holder. But there is never an issue with posting a link to the document. When queried, former DAU General Counsel Tim Wray provided further clarification on this topic:

"... I almost always encourage instructors or course managers who are contemplating using any copyrighted materials to get permission and post it in the course folder on Blackboard. However, sometimes a document will have markings indicating that it can be used, or used under certain conditions, without further permission from the copyright holder. As you probably know, the most common example of that in the digital age are 'Creative Commons' markings that specify whether, or to what extent, copyrighted materials may be used without further permission. In this case, in my view, the 'distribution unlimited' marking on the ... document permits our use without further permission. On links: the current rule (since digital stuff is evolving all the time, 'current' means 'last time I looked') providing a link, or displaying something via a digital link (such as showing something in class by opening a YouTube link) isn't a copyright violation because we are not the ones who posted (and thereby digitally duplicated) the material. This is mostly a rule of convenience: it isn't practical for the copyright holder to seek redress from thousands (or millions) of people who opened the link to some cat video, so copyright enforcement goes after the violator who posted the link without permission." 

Yes, a user must sign in to the site before they can join. Once signed in to the community site, click the 'Join this Community' button on the right side of the home page. Membership is set for automatic approval of qualified users.

In order to join a community, a person must be authenticated (signed in). Once signed in and if not already a member of the community, the visitor will see a Join this Community button in the upper right side of the home page of the community. By clicking the Join button, the user will automatically be approved as a member of the community.

All communities on DAU.edu are open communities with explicit membership, which means that we grant Visitor permissions to every authenticated user and require explicit requests to join in order to participate. Once an authenticated user clicks the 'Join this Community' button, they are automatically joined to the community with member privileges. There is no approval required.

Your DAU ID starts with the letters "DAU" and is followed by a series of numbers assigned to only you. Your DAU ID is not your username or smart card information. It is simply an identifying number. First-time users will not have a DAU ID number.

An unauthenticated user is one who visits the site but has not signed in via Okta. This user is also referred to as an anonymous user.