Meeting 2-11- 2001 with Professor Dominguez
Contract:
Bill Safcik: Do you have any questions or concerns about the current contract. Things that need to be changed or added
Frank Dominguez: No. You seem to have a good handle on the scope of the program.
Tutorial Option:
Frank Dominguez: Will there be a place holder for the tutorial option since it is not included in Phase I of the current design specs? Meaning what will the students see when they try and gain access to this feature?
Bill Safcik: Options for this are:
- A static web page that says under construction telling the user to check back later.
- A dialog box that tells the user that this option is not yet available.
- Gray this option out (empty link) so that nothing happens when this option is selected.
Bill Safcik: Do the tutorials that have the exercise integrated into them need to continue to have these interactive exercises still in them in the new system?
Frank Dominguez: No. We just ran out of development time on the current system. That is why they are in there.
Log-ins:
Bill Safcik: Since some of the work done in MicroTutor will be for a grade, how do you feel about students having multiple logins? Does it matter since they will have access to their books?
Frank Dominguez: We might not wish to allow this. But I don’t really see the harm.
Frank Dominguez: Can you describe the login procedure to me?
Bill Safcik: The student will sign on to the system and will be recognized as belonging to a specific TA. The system will track the student’s progress and record their grades, which will be able to be viewed by their TA. There will also be a guest TA that will allow people to login without being assigned a TA. I guess that their progress not be kept, but they will be able to use the system.
Frank Dominguez: I would like to be able to keep this data on these users and allow them to view their information just as if they were part of a class.
Bill Safcik: I suppose this could be done. How long do you want to keep their data? One semester?
Frank Dominguez: We should be able to keep their information for one year.
Bill Safcik: I think this can be done. I will check with the group.
Frank Dominguez: How are we going to handle the fact that students from NC State or other institutions may want to use this software, but not have TA’s assigned to their students? What is they just want a group of individual accounts?
Bill Safcik: I imagine the best way to handle this is to create a NC State TA and then all NC State students would log in and create accounts under this TA. The records would then be available to the NC State Admin person.
Log-out:
Frank Dominguez: When a student logs out of the system, I would like them to have the option to view their records. They should be able to view their scores and times.
Bill Safcik: We can look at adding this feature. I do not think it will be that hard, since we will have all the information in the database. I will check with the group and see how they feel about this.
Bill Safcik: How do you want us to handle drops for students. Suppose they are in the middle of a posttest and their Internet connection is interrupted, do you want us to discard their test info up to that point and start a new test?
Frank Dominguez: Would it be possible to allow the student to come into the system and resume where they left off?
Bill Safcik: I am not sure. This will require saving the state of the current session somehow and then resuming the session where it left off.
Frank Dominguez: Maybe you could allow the student to review the answers they have already put into the system and then allow them to continue with the next question. Say the student has completed 6 questions. They can see the first 6. This will refresh their memory as to what they had just done prior to their disconnect. They cannot alter their first 6 answers. Then they begin with the 7th question.
Bill Safcik: Maybe a submenu can be generated for the student when they select posttest, so that they know that the system “remembers” that they were in a posttest previously and the system asks them if they wish to continue? I am not sure of the complexity of this issue. I will see what I can find out.
Special Characters:
Frank Dominguez: How were you planning on special characters in the program?
Bill Safcik: What do you mean?
Frank Dominguez: For example the accented a or the n with the ~ over it. You need to allow the students some very simple way to enter these into their answers. You need to have help pages that make this information very clear. There is also the issue that some of the early exercises allow for the students to currently enter there answers with or without special characters and still get the question correct. We do this because the first year students will not be expected to know this information and we try and take this into account.
Bill Safcik: I am not sure how this will be addressed. We have not touch on this topic yet. I would imagine that we should be able to make keystrokes that allow the user to enter these characters. Or maybe, the user could select the special character from a menu bar and the character could be placed in the current field. I am not really sure. I will talk with the group about this.
Exercises:
Bill Safcik: Do the exercises need to remain in the same format that they currently are? Meaning, do they need to continue to have only one question per page?
Frank Dominguez: Yes, this is because of the interactive feedback that is built in. Each that is built into the system for each question.
Pre-tests/Post-tests:
Bill Safcik: Do the pre-tests and post-tests need to keep just one question per page as well?
Frank Dominguez: The reason for this was that we found that students tend stay more focused if we only give them one question at a time to work with. But, this is not mandatory. You could put all ten on one page if you wanted to. I will be able to make a better assessment once I see this portion of the program.
Add/Remove Questions from the Database:
Frank Dominguez: Will the system allow the TA’s and professors to select which questions the students will get when they run the pre or post tests? If a TA puts in ten new questions, they should be able to specify that they want those ten to be used in the current set of questions and answer for their students.
Bill Safcik: This is not an issue that we have discussed. I imagine that this could be achieved by check boxes by the questions that the TA wishes to use. This may be really difficult to implement. I will check with the group and see what they think.
Database Population:
Bill Safcik: How would you like to handle the population of the database with content?
Frank Dominguez: It would be nice if you can import the information from the current system into the new one. If you cannot, I will appoint someone to do this or do it myself.
Frank Dominguez: We have to be careful when adding or removing questions and answers from the database. I need to verify all the content to make sure that the questions and answers are correct before we ask a student to try and answer one.
Bill Safcik: I think what we can do here is to allow the TA to enter the information into a temporary database. At the same time the information that they entered will be emailed to you. You can then go into the main system and make any corrections and approve the new content for use. Again this may be very difficult to implement and maybe a few years off.
Server Issues:
Bill Safcik: There is a concern that I want to bring to your attention. We are currently developing on a Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. This system will not allow us to run all the applications that we need to to full test the system. This coupled with the fact that this system is not always available to us because other students can use it. This is making development difficult. I know that we have discussed the idea of purchasing a dedicated system for this project by the Romance Languages Department. Have you looked into this at all?
Frank Dominguez: No, but I will if you think it is necessary. I will contact the IT department here and get things going.