Getting Started
To start your eProfile, you simply have to log in. The log in form is on the eProfile homepage, or accessible from a link on the left menu. Enter your username and password (the same as you use for your University email) and the first time you log in a blank eProfile will be created for you. This will be assigned a handy URL in the form of http://www.eprofile.ex.ac.uk/yourname/ and is ready to work on straight away.
Editing your Profile
Once you are logged in, you will be presented with a menu of links. These are on the right hand side of the index page, and on the left menu on all pages. To begin filling in your profile, click on Edit my eProfile. This will take you to a page with six tabs, representing the six sections of your eProfile:
- About Me
- Research
- Teaching
- Curriculum Vitae
- Professional Development
- Career Aspirations
All of these sections, except About Me, are optional. They will not appear on your eProfile unless there is some content within them.
Sections:
About Me
The first section is About Me. This is the introduction to your eProfile, and a chance to write a brief biography about yourself. There are four fields in this section:
Name: With this field you have the option to edit your name, as it appears at the top of your eProfile. This will not affect your profile's web address.
After the Telephone Number and Email Address fields, there are some fields for you to detail your school and department. After those is the Brief Biography. This is the main part of the About Me section, and should be a brief description of you and your achievements. As with all sections, you can refer to the example eProfile for guidance on content.
The biography field allows you to apply formatting, using the buttons at the top of the field. The buttons are similar to those you will find in Word, or similar applications.
You can also upload a picture of yourself to appear on this section. The picture will be automatically resized to fit, and only one picture is allowed, so any new picture uploaded will overwrite the previous one.
Research
The Research section is similar to About Me, with a mixture of one line and multi line text fields. The first three fields, where you enter your school, department and Research Centre/Unit, are carried over from About Me.
Teaching
The Teaching section is record based, so you can add multiple records, for example one per institution, and they will appear sorted by date.
A record is typically made up of a start date, an end date, a title (i.e. the name of the institution) and a field for further details. All of these fields are optional except the year of the start date. Once records have been added they can be removed or edited.
Curriculum Vitae
The CV section is formed of four sub-sections. The first section is Personal Data, which is made up of a one line fields. All of these are optional, and if you've completed About Me, some will already be filled in. The following three sub-sections, Education, Professional/research experience and
Membership of Professional Bodies/Professsional Qualifications are record-based, working in much the same way as Teaching.
Professional Development
The Professional Development section is also record based, with the option of choosing pre-defined categories for types of training undertaken.
Career Aspirations
The career aspirations is a free-form text box for you to detail any aspirations you may have.
Publishing your eProfile
When your eProfile is first created, it is unpublished. This allows you to complete your Profile to a standard that you are happy with before making it publically available. Once you are happy that it is ready, you can click Publish my eProfile, and it will be accessible to anyone and will appear in the eProfile listing by researcher. You can withdraw your eProfile by unpublishing it at any time.
Viewing your eProfile
You can view your own eProfile by clicking View my eProfile after logging in. Here you can view each section exactly as they will appear and edit them accordingly. Provided your Profile is published, you, or anyone, can access it via its unique URL (http://www.eprofile.ex.ac.uk/yourname). Why not
add this to your email signature, conference presentations, business cards, CVs etc? Now that you have one, use it as much as you can!
Still stuck?
If you have any problems with eProfile that this page cannot solve, contact Chris Wood
(C.B.Wood@exeter.ac.uk).
