WebPA

Busy, busy, busy...

2009-02-09T09:16:00.004Z

This week is looking to be an interesting one. Not only are we in the midst of trying to get all of the project tied up, but we are holding the last management and advisory group meetings under the current funding. As with all of these project meetings more of my time is gobbled up by everything surrounding the meeting more than attending. I have though ordered the lunch, so all that is left is to get into the room for the meeting after the teaching has finished and set up. (Our centre administrator is on holiday, so its fend for your self time.)

Towards the end of the week, I am off to attend the community day of Dev8D and the evenings awards dinner. I'm off to the dinner as I have been nominated for an award. At the moment I am not sure what to expect, but it should be interesting to say the least. I will of course post the out comes if any.

Right I better get to the day job and make sure everything is in place for the meetings.

The lapse in blog posts has continued

2009-01-29T09:38:00.003Z

I am aware that the lapse in blogging has continued. There are many reasons behind the lack of posts, mostly related to time.

Since the last post we have held our very first user group meeting for the WebPA tool. I am happy to say that the event was more than successfully. It out stripped my expectations of the day, my only wish was that people would talk and interact with each other. Well they all talked, talked and talked some more (causing us to over run on sessions). This makes such a nice change from me doing all the talking about WebPA, and also from event delegates behaving like the students they say never interact.

One of the best statements about the day came from a delegate who said;

This tool has a great future but it needs to move quickly if it doesn’t want to be overtaken by the big boys’ (e.g. Blackboard et al) growing desire to jump on the ‘assessment and feedback’ bandwagon. Congratulations to all those who’ve worked on it so far and I’d like to express my interest in getting involved.

Really that statement says it all for me. Not only does this person see how they can implement and support the tool at their institution, but they also want to become involved. I think that we can say that we are now at score 2 (score1 being reached a while ago). And that was really what I wanted to get out of the user group, but believe me we got more... one implementer has talked about creating a ''power link for Blackboard, another suggested they help us work with the Moodle community, the list goes on and on.

In addition to the user group, the Physical Sciences Subject Centre held an assessment event last week and again the feedback has been really positive. The day after I was at an e-learning conference at the University of Ulster. This was yet another interesting event and initial feedback was positive and encouraging. I think that we may have collected more potential adopting institutions. I still think more the merrier, but we are coming to the end of the funding and although they will be good for the sustainability of the project, at the moment it looks like with out further funding many of these potential adopters will be out in the cold and not have the support adopters up till now will have had. Only time will tell though

Lapse in Blogging

2008-12-08T14:37:00.004Z

It seems such a long time since I managed to write a post and in this time so much has happened.

We are well on our way to providing our first ever user group. The venue has been selected, booked, the last thing to do it to confirm numbers and the bookeing. Hopefully, this will be complete by the end of the day. The programme of what is happening for the day is well on its way. There are areas that need work and there is now so little time in which to do the work. But the very nice folks over at OSS-Watch have agreed to help and provide a presentation on community and how it works within the world of open source. But we would like the day to be more centered around those who are going to use the WebPA tool and support insitutional users.

Before preparing for the user event, I ran a work shop at the University of Coventry who have installed WebPA and are in the process of piloting the tool with a small number of academics. This ment that the people attending the workshop had very specific questions about the tool and its operation. None of the questions where anything that I hadn't faced before, but they did introduce some ideas and concepts I had never considered. As always more food for thought. To try and ensure that these where not lost the new features have been added to the projects source forge area, and also noted on the project website.

Netskills workshop

2008-10-22T08:00:00.003+01:00

This morning I am in Newcastle, going through the elements which make up the task that I will be asking the participants at the Netskills workshop to do. Last week I did the workshop in Oxford at the same event, it went very well and we have received some really positive feedback.

The workshop element that I am running is on WebPA (of course). While thinking what we could do, I decided that we would take a model used at Loughborough within the peer assessment workshops run, but not look at all the types of peer assessment. One of the reasons for not looking at all the types of peer assessment is due to the limitation on time, I have one hour.

So in the hour that we have, I have a quick presentation, covering the background and where WebPA comes from. Then I introduce the task... in this case I am asking them to produce a poster in groups on the Student Learning Experience (the main thread of the days workshops). I have a set of users who they become as this takes the edge of when they have to fill in the assessment.

Again today I hope that Sharon Waller can mark the posters, before all the participants come back together. Once back together, we collaboratively set the parameters for the assessment and look at the reports generated.

Last time Martin from the Economics Subject Centre came out as top student! As Martin is going to be there again to day I hope he is not top student again. When I originally thought about this work shop I thought of giving out chocolates as a prize, but this then adds a competitive edge and detracts from peer moderated marking and takes us more in to game theory. So no chocolates, but we will identify the top student, but we wont identify the worst, even hiding under alias' its not fair to pick on one person.

In Oxford everyone seemed to enjoy the ask and being a student again. By doing this they are seeing the student perspective and experiencing what the put students through (even if it is only an hour). After to day, I will put more information on running a workshop on the projects web site for others to pick up and use.

A busy time...

2008-10-13T09:59:00.004+01:00

As a project we received some really good news over the weekend. A paper we submitted has been accepted, a part from some edits we need to make from the reviewers comments. Of course when the paper is officially published I will provide the citation for it.

However, this news has impacted my already busy week some. I need to turn the edits around quickly. As on Wednesday I am in Oxford at a Netskills workshop, then Thursday and Friday I am at the ACED Conference. Both are representing the project. The Netskills workshop should be fun, I will be getting the participants to create a poster on a given topic and then mark themselves and their team mates using the WebPA tool. We will not be comparing different peer moderated marking techniques as we don't really have time in 1 hour.

Thursday and Friday, are very different though. I only have 20 minutes to provide an over view of WebPA. This time thought the focus is quite particular, civil engineering. So I will be providing two case studies, where WebPA is used at Loughborough. I am currently not aware of any other institution using WebPA in civil engineering, though it would be nice to compare.

Next week will also prove to be busy and interesting. At the moment I am attending another Netskills workshop but this time in Newcastle. Following this I am going to take some time out, but only if the paper has been submitted.

Programme meeting time again

2008-10-06T14:30:00.003+01:00

It only seems last month when we had a programme meeting for the project. But we have one looming on this Wednesday. I'm sure that we had to do something for it, but I can't remember and I will have to sit down and go through all the emails related to it. However, at the moment this seems a very futile exercise with everything that needs to be done. I will though spend some time this afternoon sorting through and finding out.

But there is so much to be achieved in the next few days and weeks. I need to finish sorting out the few glitches in the released code. As with every release you think you have nailed it, and then you come across something that is not quite right. At the same time I am frantically trying to up date all of the manuals on the website to reflect the changes in the system. I think this is how I keep identifying the problems that are appearing. Perhaps next time I can make the changes in the documentation and then release the system. You live and learn.

Additionally, we have been invited to so many things recently that I seem to be out and about a lot. But this has the knock on effect of I need to get all my normal work done and then on top I need to prepare for the events. Next week is the most crowded. I have a work shop with the Netskills team organised by the HEA next Wednesday, followed immediately by the ACED Conference.

I would rather be this way, busy, I hate not having things to do. But at some point I will need to slow down and take some time out.

Formative e-assessment workshop

2008-10-02T14:35:00.004+01:00

To day I am down at the WLE center at the university of London attending their JISC project workshop on formative assessment.

We are all in groups working towards developing some case studies on one persons experiences of formative assessment. These case studies are being constructed through the person talking about their experience, another types the information directly into the projects wiki page. At the moment we are in the process of listening to other groups explaining the case study (this person is not the case study individual or the person who typed the assessment.)

It is really interesting to see the different uses of assessment. From the WebPA project formative assessment is an area that is not really exploited to its full potential. It would be nice to gather examples of where the WebPA tool is to assist formative assessment.

I think that from today I will take away a number of things, both for the project and also ideas for what we may wish to include in our user group day.

Over a month...

2008-09-24T14:06:00.005+01:00

I just came to write an update to the blog to give you some idea of what is happening with the project and realised it is well over a month since I last posted anything and it is already coming up to the end of the month.

To recap the month just gone will be far to audios for both me as a writer and to you as the reader. Instead I will try to highlight some of the success that we have managed and also cover some of the problems we have encountered.

One of the reasons for not being able to write to this blog as much has steamed from the fact the project has lost a member of the team. Steve has moved on to pastures new and I can be grudge him the opportunity that came up for him. As a result of this loss the project is suffering, hopefully only for the short term. However, Steve has left a couple of elements which he did not have time to finish off to his satisfaction. One of these elements is the production of the case studies. Although Steve managed to get around 14 academics here at Loughborough there are others who could not see him in time. Due to this I have picked the stragglers up and hope to have them done by the end of next week, but the case studies so far are all on the project website (I added the ones Steve completed under his name, there is no way I could take credit for his hard work.)

Before an event in Cardiff set up and run by the Engineering Subject Centre, I met the new Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching, who was interested to hear about the use of WebPA at the University of Wales, Newport. The academic tutor has also been able to provide the project with a case study, although this is not community development in the code side of things it still constitutes (as far as I am concerned) this should count as a success for the project.

Another event, but local to Loughborough University was also a success and for three hours I don't think I got a break from talking about the WebPA tool and its use at Loughborough. I did though find out some interesting ways in which the tool is being used here. Again these are practices that were never considered through out the history of the project.

Finally, we are being invited to some interesting workshops as participants (JISC formative e-assessment 2nd practical Enquiry Day andCommunity Building and Open Source Development Workshop) and some as presenters (Using Technology to Support the Student Learning Experience). As you can imagine the coming month is going to be hectic, with lots to do and places to go. On top of this we will be releasing the next version of WebPA, which will require updates to the user guides for both the installer, administrator and the academic user, so if there is anyone out there who can help, all offers will be considered (of course in an open source way).

A quick update before a break

2008-08-13T14:47:00.004+01:00

It's August and I have decided like the rest of Europe to take some time off. But this does not mean that the project will stop. Life and development will still be occurring.

Today though, the WebPA project has been held high as an example again. This time rather than from inside the project it came from the Programme manager David down a JISC drumming up support for the UK round of IMS award short lists. I would say that any JISC project should have a go. The reward to the project is phenomenal in terms of credit to the project team and also lead institution.

We are also in the process of writing a paper which will hopefully be accepted into the special issue of the BJET. But only time will tell.

However, when back we will be gearing up to make a new release of the WebPA tool, providing people with enough time to get an installation working before the next semester. If you are interested in using WebPA or installing it I suggest that you contact the project. If you do take the WebPA tool and use it you could join our list of adopting institutions.

Visiting a WebPA adopter

2008-08-08T09:55:00.004+01:00

Earlier this week, we went down to the University of East Anglia (UEA) to the Medical department to meet with two staff members heavily involved in the assessment of students. They had found the WebPA project and system, and seen how they can apply it to their situation.

The implementation of WebPA they will use will not at first exploit the full system. They are looking at using the system to gather the data needed from the students against the form criteria. This is where the break comes, UEA will not be using the algorithm, but exploiting the form reports (hopefully we will be providing a tailored report). The system will address the need to asses students abilities as part of the General Medical Councils guidelines on fitness to Practice.

This forms an interesting break from both how the system was designed to use into an interesting area for the project to explore. It is only the flexibility that the system provides that allows this to happen. If the project had gone down the route of producing a more stringent process focused system UEA may never have been able to use the tool.

All in all watch this space and see how the use of WebPA develops for a new type of assessment.

Landing on our feet again...

2008-07-03T14:30:00.006+01:00

Next week will see the annual CAA (Computer Aided Assessment) Conference at Loughborough. Back in February when they where asking for abstracts, I did think of writing a paper and submitting. But then there where more pressing things staring me in the face, including all the work for the project and the IMS Learning Impact Awards. As a result the time to sit and write an abstract escaped.

Since the dark days of February, I never really thought much more about the CAA Conference until towards the end of May when some one mentioned that they might see me there. A general assumption that I would be attending as it is at Loughborough. But again this was soon forgotten.

However, everything changed on Tuesday this week. After a meeting related to another forth coming conference (Engineering Education 2008, again at Loughborough) it was mentioned to see if we could get our posh banners up during the CAA. Following this I duely emailed those organising the CAA, to receive the response of;

... as it happens we have a free slot in the programme on Wednesday at 11.30 a.m. if you'd like to present a demo, also we'd be happy to distribute your publicity material to the delegates.

Well I'm not one for turning offers like this down. So we have jumped in both feet first. This has resulted in an increase in work for a couple of days and I have to pull together a presentation for 45 minutes, but hey we have more than enough expertess and information on this project not to be able to do this. Also those at the CAA conference are also part of our community, well not directly the WebPA community, but the wider assessment community so it will be good for us to be there.

IMS Regional Finals for the next IMS Learning Impact Awards

2008-06-25T09:22:00.004+01:00

This morning I received an email about the UK having their own regional finals for the IMS Learning Impact Awards for 2009. Over the past two years there have been two successful UK entries to the Awards, WebPA (Loughborough University) being one and OpenLearn from the Open University the other.

I would encourage anyone with a project in the UK to have a go and see where you get. There is no harm in trying and if you are successful you will be awarded with the recognition of your project within your institution and the UK. Being an award wining project means a lot for both the project and those involved. If you don't know where to start, I would recommend contacting the folks at JISC Cetis as they know the community at IMS better than anyone. You can also read about my experiences of attending the conference and the award process by reading the past entries I made related to the IMS Awards.

Selecting the right time to release

2008-06-19T10:30:00.004+01:00

Today, my main task was to make a new release of the WebPA files. This should be a simple job, but our timing is really off. Just recently Sourceforge have moved their systems to a new data center. Which seems to have had a effect on some of the services that they provide, such as the wiki and the FTP upload for project releases.

This has prompted conversations about reporting on our view of sourceforge and the issues and limitations that we have found with the system. I have in the past written about the 'sourceforge' effect and perceived views and values of the system, which in a way covers the issues that we are facing at the moment. But with all things in the open source arena, they are providing a free to use service so some give and take needs to be afforded.

For us, this is a glitch that we will just have to cope with for now and hope that they will have the systems over at Sourceforge up and running again really soon.

Gathering survey information online

2008-06-03T16:18:00.002+01:00

Over the past day or so I have been developing a bespoke survey for the researcher on the project to use. This need for the bespoke tool has come about as they would like to survey the students who have just recently used the WebPA tool (we are fast approaching the end of semester two).

This all seems so simple, why not use one of the many tools that are already out there and in use. For a start there is SurveyMonkey, PollDaddy and FreeSurveysOnline to name a few who are free. But that's the catch isn't it 'free', however, what they really are is limited use. All three mentioned above are free is your survey will be for less than 100 user and only 10 questions (approximately).

So that left us in a bit of limbo... we know at Loughborough that we wanted to contact the academics of 35 modules which have run or are about to run WebPA. Each module ranged in size from 30+ to 300+, which automatically rules out the free survey tools, even taking into account the low response rate normally received by surveys.

At this point the options are limited but viable. We can either bite the bullet and pay to run the survey or develop a bespoke form. However, in building a bespoke form there are compromised to be had. The first is that you loose the ability for the researcher to create and edit the form easily ( well in our case some knowledge of PHP and HTML) and you also loose the nice GUI reporting tools, but who says that they will provide you with the reports you actually want. On the plus side, all the information is kept within the institution, which helps with the ethics side of carrying out the survey and the data is easily accessible and can be manipulated easily via a spread sheet. The final survey has also been tailored so that we can collect information dependant on the URL sent to the recipients/participants. This has meant that we can easily filter the information dependant on module and also semester, but also easily use the same survey at the adopting institutions, by identifying the university.

All in all there is nothing wrong with the tools available that are 'free' as in 'limited', but there are times where a bespoke survey will provide slightly more, even if it is just simple peace of mind on where the resultant information will be.

Amazon Clouds

2008-05-29T15:22:00.005+01:00

Until now I have not really looked in to the Amazon Clouds or to give it its proper name, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2 for short). But at the JISC Cetis meeting someone mentioned them again so I thought that I had really better take a look at what they are and how easy it would be to use. I could have just evaluated the EC2 from the developers point of view, but often the issue that we have with installations of WebPA are related to a single academic tutor wanting to use the system and not having access to a server or the knowlegde to install the system. So as a quick solution the EC2 looks like the right tool for the job.

Well that is on the surface at least. A further look and you suddenly become aware of how complex the system can become. When you first read the information about the EC2 it appears that you access the service set up and instance for you and off you go. However, on closer inspection, this webservice is really aimed at seasoned developers. Not only is the documentation at times confusing, but when you do find a very good tutorial on getting started (based on using a Mac) you soon realise that it is far to complex for the average Joe.

In light of this I would recommed that an experienced developer use the EC2, but I will have to look at something else to make life easier for a none technical potential user. This means that I will need to build a bundle of tools for the next release of the WebPA tool, similar to those used for Moodle.

One last point on the Amazon EC2, is that there is a cost. Its adoption into the Education arena particularly in the UK may be slow due to this and there are also other services available that may be more intune with the UK Education system such as eduserv.

Multi SIG meeting

2008-05-29T09:07:00.003+01:00

Last week I attended the joint SIG meeting for the JISC CETIS groups on enterprise, portfolios and assessment up in Glasgow. As the developer for the project I tend to try and attend the Enterprise SIG meetings, but so far I have not been able to attend the assessment meetings, due to timing. But more over this was the first time that I would be presenting.

For me the meeting was a huge success. There where a lot of people there who are interested in the WebPA system and what it can provide for them. One person could see positive uses for WebPA in further education colleges that they support. Others could see a use for WebPA in their teaching and institutions. This is all really positive for the project as we have a very unique tool that there seems to be a real need for.

However, I must say that we where not the only project presenting, Alan also provided information on the DELIA project and there where others there to discuss a new standard for schools being proposed the the BSI and much much more. I do tend to find that these meetings are informative and interesting in the variety of topics, projects and subjects that are covered in such a short period of time.

I hope that the interest expressed at the time can translate into people actually downloading and trying the WebPA system for themselves.

WebPA is now award wining

2008-05-21T09:04:00.004+01:00

I spent last week at the IMS Global annual conference in Austin, Texas, USA. The main reason for being there was to represent the WebPA project for a submission that I made back around Christmas time.

The main aspect of the awards process after being shortlisted comprised of a speed dating style presentation to small groups of conference attendees for five minutes and then all change to the next group. All in all we repeated this for a total of twenty three times. I am really glad that Peter Willmot, a colleague here at Loughborough, was able to accompany me there, as I don't think that I would have been able to do that on my own. At the end of the presentation time I think we had lost the plot, I can't remember what we said, to whom and when. Some of the groups that came round must have had the same things repeated to them a couple of times during our presentation. I do know that this whole process lasted over two hours.

The rest of the conference had some interesting points, but in the main a lot of the sessions where misleading. I attended a session on learning out comes and analytics, which turned out to be more related to data mink for student retention, the challenges and reasons why it is difficult to do.

However, as with every conference it was the networking time that was more beneficial. Various people showed interest in the WebPA system, including representatives from the Open University in the UK, Sakai and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. All of which I intend to follow up in the near future.

At the end of the conference was the awards ceremony, during which the WebPA project was presented with a Bronze Award. Although I am sure that we could have gotten a silver or higher if we where more prepared for the presentation people herding session. But a bronze is better than no awards at all.

Looking back on the experience I definitely would say that the almost ordeal of going through the whole process including the presentation aspect has been well worth it. Not only will this benefit me as an individual in my career (I put in the submission in the first place), but also the institution that I am based and of course the project and JISC. I will also take the opportunity to thank the JISC Cetis for all the help and support in assisting us with the submission, and supporting us at the conference.

Embeded in another institution

2008-04-30T11:46:00.005+01:00

Up until now, I have done a lot of unseen work with potential adopters. Mainly this has been supporting them on an individual basis as part of the project. Through out this time I have been treading a very thin line on being closed as a project, and open at the same time. Its very much like having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I know which is the correct route and which is the incorrect. But now I face a dilemma on ensuring that the results of this hard work are fully disseminated.

Part of the reason for not being completely open from the start is due to the project structure and the process of education. The project had the spirit of collaboration from the start, but this was a very much closed process. Although I have objected to this closed method from time to time, I have been over ridden on numerous occasions. It appears that the fear of 'airing dirty laundry in public' will always prevail.

But after a success, I then have to mess round, checking that any information provided in an email can then be shared and disseminated. This step could have been avoided in the first place by ensuring all communication had been open, but at the same time I don't think that the relationship would have been built as well.

However, this does not answer the initial point of this post, which is...WebPA is now embedded at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and will be used with a first year module for the next five years. The MMU has also received some very positive comments from external examiners. Further more, other HOD's within MMU are also showing interest.

This is all great news and shows that opensource projects can be successful within this HE arena, but do require some nurturing.

Have we met another important milestone...

2008-04-25T14:29:00.004+01:00

...following the demo (thanks to OSS-Watch) at the JISC Conference 2008 (15 April), we have now passed the 200 downloads mark. I know that there are some people who will still remind me that by using the stats provided by the sourceforge area we will not get a real picture. I accept this but at the same time, the stats can help us see that in the days following (untill today) we have had 39 downloads of the system. Yes, I hear you say, but don't forget the project svn. Well I haven't, when I looked at this there has been little activity other than me writing files.

This is not the only knock on effect of demonstrating WebPA at the JISC Conference, I can also track, hightened activity on both the project demonstrator, but also on the project website.

This all bodes well for the project and shows that the way in which we have interacted with the wider HE community to date has been benificial. By word of mouth and attending events such as the JISC conference, prospective users are finding out more about the project, and hopefully will become users. In time from these users we may manage to get more input, from this we may even end up with a health self sustaining community. But I think there may be more milestones to tackle before this is reached.

JISC Conference 2008

2008-04-15T10:00:00.004+01:00

Well here we are a year on, only this time I am not telling people of the new WebPA project. This time we are demonstrating and telling of this establishing tool about to go to the IMS Global Learning Impact Awards.

Up till today a lot of the attendees for the conference have been socialising and deciding which sessions to attend on the JISC Conference social network. However, it is nice to see the photos turn into real people.

Hopefully, the project will gain more adopters from attending to day and we hope to hear from them in the very near future.

Back to juggling...

2008-04-11T11:05:00.004+01:00

At the moment there are so many different things happening.

Tuesday, the project will be at the JISC Conference 2008. Where I will be demonstrating on the OSS-Watch demonstrator stand. I need to set-up some time to prepare a laptop and ensure that there is enough data in the database to provide a meaning full demonstration.

At the same time there are element of the IMS awards that I need to prepare for. I intend to develop a series of small videos of the software that can be re used else where. There are also the posters which we would like to take.

This is all on top of trying to support all the other institutions who are adopting WebPA and keeping up to date with what stages of use they are at.

In addition to all this I need to find some time to actually sit and do some more coding. This however, may be delayed for a while and I will try and block a time for some intensive coding. Until then I will continue to fix all the problems, but not code any new major feature.

Visiting another university

2008-04-07T08:56:00.003+01:00

Today we are off to another UK university to introduce WebPA to a number of teaching staff there, in hope that they will be able to get the system installed at their institution.

However, we are going to change the format after doing three or four of these workshops. Rather than 'death by over texted PowerPoint' we are going to try having less information on the presentation. I have been against the use of tight text on power point presentations for a long time. The presentation should be a que for the presenters next point or points, rather that the time honored read the text out. This however, will be new for the project researcher, but I think that they will be fine and make a great success of this method.

As for my bit, the demonstration, we are going to try and encourage the participants to interupt and discuss the software more. Hopefully, this will encourage the prospective users to think about how they would use WebPA in their teaching, thus providing us with more potential models of use and new elements that maybe added to the system in future releases.

The reason for the change is due to a meeting that we attended last week. Rather than provide the standard presentation, an over view sheet was provided, just to give some basic information about the project. The rest of the time, we had more informal conversation, including through the demonstration.

But today, we are also going to provide the participants with time and logon information, so that they to can have a go in a safe and secure environment, without feeling that the information will be seen by real students.

See us at the JISC Conference

2008-04-04T09:16:00.004+01:00

Last year while at the JISC conference in Brimingham the folks at OSS-Watch asked if we would be interested in participating in a demo stand. Of course we jumped at the chance. Now a year later this is all becoming reality.

We have our official stint at 10:45 on the OSS-Watch demonstrator stand locationed Hall 3, opposite main JISC stand. However, we will be around all day so feel free to come and find us.

Intergrating Moodle

2008-04-03T08:18:00.003+01:00

While at the JISC Programme meeting in March I spoke to Jonathon who has done some moodle integration for his JISC project. He was able to point me in the right direction as to how integration can be achieved.

As some of you will know the documentation for moodle can be a bit flaky and in my experience you often find that some terms are used for one or more things and this is the case for creating extensions for the system. Jonathon pointed me at NEWMODULE which allows you to create a plugin. However the word module is used repeatedly in VLE development and education. So when I had been originally looking for this ability I had been snowed under with information on setting a new module (in academic terms) rather than creating a plugin or widget.

However, I am now at my next hurdle. We have the method to achieve some basic integration, but there is no defined plan of what we will be doing with it. So the next stage is to work out what we will want the widget to do. But there is also another hurdle lurking in the background. Once we know what we want to do, and have an idea on how we are going to develop it, we will need access to a test environment (ie a copy of moodle somewhere). Once these obstacles are over come then I think that we will be well on our way to providing some integration for VLEs, we will then just need to look at the others.

So what happened to March

2008-04-02T13:35:00.003+01:00

At the almost beginning of march I wrote about attending the JISC Programme Meeting. Well the outcomes where that it was interesting to see that other JISC e-assessment orientated projects are having some of the same issues that we as a project have been facing. However, in other respects we are miles ahead of others in what we have accomplished. A lot of attendees where interested in how we had progressed to being open source so quickly in the project and where interested in finding out more about what they could learn from us. Also the other main area people where interested in was the IMS Award shortlist. For me the afternoon was not quite as good as it could have been, and I really didn't have much to take away with me.

The following week I was at the OSS-Watch Risk Management in Open Source Procurement. For me the key elements that I picked up on where:

The more customisations move away from the original code the harder they are to maintain and also integrate back in
What business reasons can we provide to show that the adoption of WebPA is beneficial
What are the upgrade cycles for a project, as this will often help to sway a potential adopter
What would aid our survivability, would it be via becoming a service.
How can we best show the scalability of the WebPA system.

A lot of other topics where also covered, far too many to mention here.

In the middle of this I have damaged my hand and wrist so, somethings are becoming slightly behind as I work through the pain. I have also had to take some holiday, so that was the end of March really.

Now we are in April, I am getting back into the swing of things. However, I still have a list as long as my arm that I need to complete soon, as well as, preparing for the IMS Awards next month, which is only 5.5weeks away!

JISC programme meeting

2008-03-11T13:20:00.004Z

Tomorrow, I am at the JISC programme meeting all day. The morning discussion will follow on from the meeting back in October were a lot of the discussion was related to the evaluation plans for the projects and where based around a lot of work completed by Glenaffric. This is followed by the small group discussion. For the following parallel session I will be with the Life long learning group of projects.

This may seem strange for a project who's emphasis is on the assessment of students in Higher Education (HE). As a project we were funded under this strand, but we should not have to limit ourselves to just HE, especially as we are open source and therefore any one in any of the Life-long Learning networked(LLN) and Further Eduction(FE) colleges can also use to tool. Our community also has to be open to these groups of potential users.

We also need to be able to define how we will operate within the Life-long Learning arena. Well to do this the benefits of the tool need to be considered. Some of the benefits of the tool are related to the teaching of key sills that will benefit the students using the system when in the wider world. Other benefits can be linked to the development of skills for employability. However, we must recognise that in developing these, often seen as distinct skills groups, we are also providing the students will skills that will encourage Life-long learning. Some of the more powerful skill that should be developed through the use of the WebPA tool include; self evaluation and reflection, leading to the understanding of the need to improve and learn from mistakes made. These skills are often intangible and over looked.

Anyway the other sessions that I will be attending, is the informal networking. This will give me a chance to find out in greater detail the problems that other projects are facing and see if there is anything that we can learn form them. I also will be on the lookout for people who may be interested in collaborating with the WebPA project, hopefully to help identify others who may pilot the tool as well as people who would just like to be come part of the wider community developing around the project.

Hopefully, I will be able to report back later in the week on the information that I have gathered.

M1/M69 workshop

2008-03-06T10:07:00.001Z

This afternoon the WebPA project are running a workshop for the UK institutions in the M1/M69 group. Although other institutions are able to attend as usual with the work shop being a Loughborough the bias on the make up of the group is predominantly tutors from here. But we are encouraged that there are also tutors from other institutions who are also attending.

I will be interested in finding out from those academics attending from other institutions the following information;

Do you think that WebPA will be a tool that can be used in your institution.
Do you think that there will be any difficulties in getting WebPA available in your institution for you to use
Can you identify other colleagues that may also be interested in using WebPA at your institution
Would you like us to help get WebPA available at your institution
Have you any guidelines as to using group work for your department/faculty/institution
Are there policys/ guides to assessment within your institution.

Hopefully in getting the response to some of this information will help us build the picture to show the barriers to adoption that exist.

Other JISC projects - open source, sustainability ... the lot

2008-03-03T09:51:00.004Z

Following my post last week, related to whether it is feasible for WebPA to become sustainable and the impact of the funding, a post popped up on Rowins blog on essentially the same topic.

Rowin's post is about three JISC funded assessment tools. The three tools though have left becoming open source till their funding has ceased. So what is the future for these projects, well I don't know. I fear that, although there are seven developers and a sourceforge area, there is no wider community to support the future of these projects. Further funding would possibly extend their lives, but as pointed out time and time again, with no community to support the projects, is there a future in the short term worth paying out for.

I would love to know from all of the JISC funded projects, funded at the same time as WebPA;

how many have released their code under open source,
how many are beginning to build up a community to support their tools,
who has waited till the end of the funding to release their tools,
has any one really shouted loud enough to gather interest in the tools, to build the community's,
is there any tool which is likely to reach sustainability.

I know that WebPA is the exception to all of those, but at times it has been a fight to get every ones buy in to the open source ethos and way of doing things. Some of the barriers and limitations on to the project have been discussed in this blog. I hope to continue raising these sometimes awkward points, at least till the funding ends for us too, or in the perfect world we reach sustainability.

Can we ever expect to reach sustainability

2008-02-26T09:25:00.003Z

Last Thursday we had another meeting with members of the OSS-Watch team, this time the topic for conversation was specifically sustainability. Prior to OSS-Watch coming Ross blogged about the meeting and whether it was viable to build a community to support the project in such a short time.

The meeting proved to raise some interesting opinions from those who attended. One point that came over very clearly is the relationship of project success to project funding. I think that keeping a project ticking over once the funding has finished should not necessarily be a drain on any finances that are around. At the same time the original funding source should not leave the project high and dry. The funders should enable a more sustainable out come to be reached, in the sort term this may require continuation funding. I do accept though that funding can not go on forever and projects have to succeed for themselves if they are to survive.

Another point which was strongly made was that of reputation. This again is a crucial aspect of any project and does not just effect the institution, but also the possibility of gaining more adopters. Here they would like to continue to build on the developing reputation around the WebPA project. Again the but, if there is no clear sustainability plan past the funding, then we could be risking the reputation we are developing.

In all I have learnt that sustainability seems to be a double edged knife. Every action that we take or directions which we go in, can have a dramatic impact on the project, during its life cycle, but also in the long term. Really sustainability needs to have been built in from the beginning, with both success and exit strategies, but hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Update on one little action...

2008-02-20T19:18:00.004Z

The JISC have to day published a press release on WebPA being short listed for the IMS Global Award. Also with the continuing support from OSS-Watch, who also included the WebPA project in one of their latest blog atricles, there is no pressure...

Further to this Rowin has posted on her blog as well.

A busy time of the year...

2008-02-18T11:14:00.003Z

The project are at the moment approaching a very hectic time, with something happening almost every week from now until easter and beyond.

To begin with we are heading to Newcastle (home for me) to present a workshop at an assessment event being held at the University of Northumbria. As this event is geared around assessment practice I think that we will build up some good contacts for the future. But we don't just stop there we are also going to be running an M1/M69 event. Closley followed with another event where we are presenting at the JISC RSC HE Conference 2008.

The projects momentum keeps going with more and more interest being generated. If you are interested then I still think the best places to start are the website and the demonstrator.

One innocent little action...

2008-02-13T14:45:00.006Z

In the run up to christmas I suggested that it would be good for the project to enter the IMS Global Learning Impact Awards. In doing this I landed my self a huge chunk of work in filling out the application. The application was not as straight forward as I had hoped and it even ate into my christmas holiday. But the application went in, with some in put form the WebPA evengelists here at Loughborough and the JISC Cetis Assessment co-ordinator.

The new year came and went. Then at the beginning of Feburary news came in that we had been accepted as a finalist. There were a couple of weeks to decide whether to progress to the finals or not. Now progression has been agreed and in the space of a few days news is already getting around.

Firstly, the Cetis co-ordinator sent an email with congratulations and now JISC are asking for a quote for a press release on how the project feels. Hopefully all this publicity will work for the project and draw in more institutions that will want to use the tool. All in all, not bad for a little open source project, bearly a year old!

What more can you want from a community member?

2008-01-29T10:02:00.000Z

As some will know WebPA has been around in a number of guises (although only available at Loughborough University), but the original concept came from an academic called Peter Willmot.

Peter has stuck with the WebPA tool from the beginning and has been one of the best supporters for future development. As a supporter Peter has contributed vastly to inclusion of new features to WebPA over the year. Since becoming a JISC funded open source project, Peters status within the project community has slowly changed. Now I would confidently say that he is one of the main evangelists for the project.

Within the role of evangelist for the project Peter has spoken across the world about WebPA and over the years has created a number of contacts. Recently this has paid off for the project. One of Peters contacts in Australia - Lydia Kavanagh from the University of Queensland and her team have successfully installed a copy of WebPA and are intending to begin using the tool over the coming weeks. Hopefully I will be able to let you know more as this new community relation ship builds.

However, the real message should be that if you can develop a community member from a user to an evangelist then there is no stopping how far you can go. For the project this is a mammoth step out side the funding remit, but a giant leap in moving towards being a sustainable project. Not bad really for a little project I joined just over a year ago.

New Year Update

2008-01-25T09:23:00.000Z

Well the first month of the new year is almost complete and this will be my first post. Even though this is the third week I have been back, after the holiday session, lots has already happened.

To begin with I attended the CETIS Portfolio and Enterprise SIG meeting, where I had the chance to speak to people who are interested in the use of WebPA. Also with the meeting involving the Portfolio SIG I also had the opportunity to talk about the feedback mechanism which exists in WebPA. Those involved in Portfolio work suggested it may be an idea if this feedback to the student could be linked into Portfolio systems easily. This was a subject which was again raised in the recent project advisory board meeting. Perhaps this can be something for the future development of WebPA.

I have also been trying to reach a point where a new stable release can be made. However, as with all good intentions this has had to be delaied. After I have made a couple of fixes and alterations to the system then I hope to be able to make the release in the next week.

But on more positive notes; our Advisory Board meeting was a sucess. A lot of interesting points where raised and new pointers for some elements of the software where also highlighted.

Also, we have had increasing levels on interest in the WebPA tool. I have been monitoring where the interest has come from and how the parties have reached us. But the best news has been interest in the project from the otherside of the world, all thanks to one of the projects evangelists. I hope to blog a bit more about this later, when I can hopefully reviel more.

In the mean time I hope that this post has given you an insight of what has happened over the brief silent period.

Taking a break for christmas

2007-12-21T15:58:00.000Z

This will be my last post for 2007.

I still have the odd bit of work to complete, including submitting an application for an award.

But for now, seasonal greetings and I will be back in the new year.

Running to Christmas

2007-12-17T09:28:00.001Z

For many people the run up to Christmas is a period of slow down, well for me at the moment it appears to be as hectic as usual.

Well, the WebPA project has no time to slow down. I have such a long list of things to achieve before January is out. All of the time constraints put up on us at this time of year are often unrealistic as people forget that there is Christmas and the new year. This means that almost two weeks are taken out of a the nine weeks for the two months. I am not sure that people bear this in mind when setting deadlines of the 31st December or even mid way through January. This then leaves realistically only 4 to 14 days to meet the deadlines, which then is further reduced when you have to confer and liaise with others.

So why am I writing this now, when I claim to have so much to do, well that's the thing isn't it. As the deadlines are so close now, I can find another million and one things to do other than what needs to be done. But if we are to make WebPA a successful project then we need to do all this extra stuff on top, such as entering global competitions, writing papers and workshops, wishing our fledgling community a merry holiday etc etc...While, in the back ground the mundane still has to happen, the new enhancements need to be made to the software, so that a new release can be made in the new year. The tasks for the work packages need to be completed, so that we can reassure the funders that they have not wasted their money in funding the project. This will keep the project ticking along and hopefully on track for the imminent future. It would be nice to think that this was considered from the out set, but as with all projects, the vision is great, the time scales crap and unyielding and the expectations are high. We then have other deadlines imposed due to external needs, resulting in a mamouth mountain to climb.

All in all, trying to keep the momentum of the project, while not getting bogged down in to much work and unrealistic deadlines is hard.

Talk about TV eating itself

2007-12-11T10:19:00.000Z

Maybe I was wrong. One of the first talks was about who and why communication is occurring. This covered the dissemination of project information and to view this as a strategic action to ensure the information is reaching the planned, targeted and correct audience. By being strategic we can ensure that we raising awareness of our project as well as encourage implementation and take up of our project.

Talk about TV eating itself, well this is blogging eating itself. One element that was discussed was the feedback mechanism for blogs. I really like having the feedback feature as it allows me to let people interested in the WebPA project follow what I am doing, but also receive feedback from those who have gone through similar things. I also use the blog to let people know what I think about events I am attending or have attended, hence, this entry. What I did not expect was to be part of the talk/ presentation on blogs and RSS feeds.

A lot of interesting conversations have occurred, orientated around the process of blogs. It has been interesting in getting the opinions of the people in the room, to see how they are using, or intending to use blogs. However, the general consensus is that blogs are useful if used correctly. This conclusion has been carefully orchestrated by the presenters, in that the attendees are encouraged to consider both sides.

During the day we also covered; podcasts, wikis and social networking sites. It was also interesting to see the tools and options that are available, as well as discuss how they can be used. Some of the comments about the tools where really valuable. One comment that stuck was about there being a variety of tools available and finding that not everyone has access to the same tools. But personal preference rules, and you can not force anyone into using anything.

Has the event been what I expected yesterday, well... yes and no... what do I mean, well I haven't learnt anything that I didn't already know. But it has been worthwhile in being able to explore other issue that I had not considered. I still think that the title is misleading and does not really describe what you gain from the day. Perhaps this is due to concepts of what Netskills do... but the it was quite refreshing that the day was not technical, about how you install the tools, more about how to use the tools and use them both appropriately and well.

Using technology for Effetive Project Communication

2007-12-10T11:38:00.000Z

Tomorrow I attend an event by the above name. The event is being run by Netskills at the request of JISC to support projects in communication. The blurb states the following;

For some projects, the first and only contact with the community is a final report. However, a project is more likely to be successful if it engages with the community throughout its duration, promoting ongoing reflection and allowing audience feedback to direct the project.

Emerging web technologies such as blogs, wikis, pod casts and social networks can provide an effective way to do this. This event will consider best practice in using such technologies in the context of communication and dissemination for your JISC project.

By the end of the workshop participants will have created an action plan for how technology can best support their project communication and dissemination activities.

Really, I think the title for the workshop may be really misleading. Perhaps something more about communicating with your community via technology would have been more appropriate.

One element that I am not sure that is being covered is identifying the community. I know that some projects do not widely disseminate their information, but perhaps this is due to them not knowing who to communicate with.

It is okay having all the technology at your finger tips, but if you are not sure about your target audience then how do you select the most appropriate tool for communication. Not all the tools out there are going to be successful. Why would you create and host a forum, if your target audience is not likely to communicate using it. Also the failure of one medium will not ensure the success of another.

I know that this blog is successful in some respects. This is due to the fact that I collect stats, but also that comments have been left and some of the topics of the posts have been the source of discussion else where. But if I were to alter this blog and move to a wiki, where I would have less control and other peoples opinions may obliterate my own and not be relevant to the work of the WebPA Project, then the success would diminish. I might also find that I would be treading all over other peoples toes.

The open source mantra

2007-12-05T14:02:00.000Z

I have been heard to repeat frequently the mantra of "we need to release frequently and often." However as some of you know we have only made a single release so far. I am gearing up to make a release in the new year, the delay is for Christmas, also taking into account the start of the new academic year and other factors.

But this morning, in my daily reading of what is happening in the world and in particular the world of open source I came across this entry posted by Zack Urlocker, where he talks about 'release early, release often' and what they are doing at MySQL with the 'feature previews' . This may be something that WebPA can adopt to ensure that we meet our aims to release frequently, but still ensure that we can release at major mile stones. But before I dive in feet first I will see how they get on at MySQL and if they are successful then we can look at adopting this concept. It may be that the concept will work really well for larger projects but not scale as well for smaller one programmer projects.

What can a workshop do

2007-11-22T14:35:00.000Z

Yesterday the Engineering and Physical Sciences Subject Centres held a work shop on peer assessment and in particular the type of assessment that can be carried out using WebPA.

It was an interesting day for the WebPA project. We have managed to gather more interest in the project, but more importantly we have built up our fledgling community. Our JISC mail list has now increased by a 1/3 over night. We managed to capture new members by asking them to allow us to sign them up to the list.

Some of the feedback from the workshop is positive for both the project and peer assessment in general. Below are my favourite feedback responses that where received at the end of the day;

"Peer marking ideas, drawbacks, possibilities, potential of WebPA to do what I currently do long hand."

"I will introduce peer assessment into project work using the WebPA tool next year."

"Will probably seek to persuade [my institution] to join the WebPA project as a pilot institution."

"Peer assessment has to be the way forward in Higher Education, where 'Full Economic Cost' of courses holds much weight and student to staff ratios are rising rapidly."

Hopefully, we can convert attendees into adopters and in the future they may even become contributors, with some support and persuasion. But, what can a workshop do, in this case a lot for the project...

You can view the past events page on the Engineering Subject Centres website

Measuring our sucess to date

2007-11-16T14:35:00.000Z

After the release of the WebPA OS download we are happy to report that a total of twenty four (24) downloads have been made since the beginning of October 2007. We are unable to gather statistics on where these downloads are from, which is a shame, but it is encouraging that others are interested in the WebPA tool .

The reason why we are unable to gather more information than the download numbers is due in part to our use of sourceforge. Sourceforges privacy policy prohibits us from being able to access more detailed information. It a way it is sufficient to know that there have been twenty four (24) downloads of the WebPA tool. However, it would be nice as a JISC funded project to be able to identify the UK downloads. I don't know that the selection of another open source community tool would have made much difference as to the stats available, but there may have been a bigger impact on the download level achieved (possibly negatively).

Further to the downloads, we are happy to be able to also report the success of the WebPA Demonstrator (passwords). Since its launch on the 29 October 2007, the demonstrator has been used by people in the following countries; Australia, Sweden, New Zealand , and of course the UK. Within the UK we have had visitors from; Loughborough, Hull, Derby, Belfast, Oxford, London, Bristol and Edinburgh to name a few (from 17).

I have been able to collect more information about this by using the Google analytics tool. From the collection of the statistics, it is possible to evaluate how long users have stayed on the site, and in some cases presume why they leave so early. But there is no way to see how the use of the demonstrator links to a download of the WebPA tool from sourceforge.

The last interesting point is that WebPA has already reached a global audience. Although this is beyond the remit of the original funding, at the same time it can be seen as quite gratifying. Especially for those at Loughborough who have been involved with WebPA from its original inception.

Hopefully in the future I will be able to return with more information on how the WebPA project is progressing in terms of downloads and demonstrator use.

Introducing potential user to WebPA

2007-11-13T19:02:00.000Z

Today the project (Steve and myself) went to our partner institution to support our colleague Paul Chin in introducing WebPA to some of the academics at Hull University. The hope is that those present will be WebPA adopters at Hull University and then be evangelists for the system with their other colleagues.

It was interesting though to have fresh perspectives on how WebPA works and also how they would use the system. Everyone there had positive contributions as to what could be changed or added to the system. It will be interesting to compare what they require as features once they have used the system with students.

All in all, they day felt productive and beneficial for all those who attended. Hopefully, WebPA will be as successful at Hull University as it has been at Loughborough University.

When is the right time to changes the database?

2007-11-06T15:36:00.000Z

At the start of the project a lot of changes where made to the database. During the decoupling of WebPA from all of the Loughborough University systems the database was partially refactored. This allowed us to bring together all the tables in to one single schema. Once complete I hoped that we would not have to constantly be refactoring the schema as the project developed. Yes I know that this is a very old school way of approaching databases, but there where other reasons for this too.

Some of the reasons for trying not to change the schema where not due to me being old school about it, but for WebPA adoption issues. It seems that some of the problems that open source projects generate for themselves, stem from how complex the installation process can be. There also in some cases seems to be a lack of understanding about the need for backwards compatibility as well. Some of this can be blamed on the adoption of the agile methodology for programming. (I will try and address this later, but back to the reasons for not changing the database.)

Firstly we want to ensure that the system that is being offered (WebPA) can be installed and maintained with relatively little technical experience. This ensures that we will obtain early adopters who work in education. Secondly, by limiting the need to update the database we are ensuring that some potential user fears are never realised. For example, asking a none DBA to migrate a database is unfair and in most cases would scare people off updating to the new release. I also understand that our target audience are under time, facility and resource constraints that must also be considered. Once a system is installed, there may not be the resources to then apply anything other than urgent patches to the system, therefore making the upgrade may beyond their reach. There are also the issues of down-time for the updating of the database at the adopting institutions. Although the development can be completed quite easily there are issues with when institutions can afford to have any down time for WebPA. As an example an institution would be reluctant to update and migrate databases in the middle of a semester, so timing needs to also be factored in.

All this aside there are going to be times when the database does need to be altered. But when is the best time to do this and what will the cost be to the project? At the moment I am not in a position to answer this, but I am in a dilemma about it.

I have gathered information about the current user needs for WebPA and the development of some of the features may require a tweak or two to the schema. All the information [1-3] that is out there on database refactoring, sometimes called "Evolutionary Database Design" (EDD) are predominately centered around enterprise systems used in single companies / institutions. There is very little about how you approach this as a opens source project (I maybe proved wrong though!). However, in the modern world of agile programming and database refactoring this is now a fact of life, and a realistic strategy is needed for young project like WebPA.

In refactoring any element of the database, there is a need to be mindful of the three distinct steps that need to be completed. These steps are; the change to the schema, the migration of any data already existing and changing the application code to access these changes. Other elements that can be taken on board as we make these changes to the database schema is to ensure that the development of "destructive changes" are kept to a minimum. Hopefully, being realistic, there will be no major issues, but as a project there is a need to be realistic that during this process we will loose some early adopters along the way, but with the improvements to the software, more users may be gained.

[1] http://www.bottleit.com.au/blog/post/Continuous-database-integration.aspx
[2] http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/07/04/evolutionary_database_design/
[3] http://martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html

Demonstrator Launched

2007-11-01T13:19:00.000Z

As a project we have assimilated a lot of the information about open source projects and how to be one, from all sources that can be found and in particular those at OSS-Watch. One piece of advice we where given was to make a demonstrator and make it available to potential users to see what the software is about. Well this was realised at the end of October. Within this first week we have had a phenomenal response.

Firstly, Ross from OSS-Watch sent out a very nice comment to the projects JISCmail list, stating that this is a significant step for community development. Secondly, the statistics that are being gathered about the visitors to the site are looking incredible. Already, there are visitors from the UK and the most interesting are the visitors from further afield. It appears that we are getting global interest already. (Not bad for a little JISC funded project with 2 full time staff and another who contributes 1/2 a day a week.)

I hope this has a knock on effect for out fledgling community, by attracting more members. Only time will tell though. But for now I think that all those people who have helped the project get this far, deserve a pat on the back!

Driveby Contribution

2007-10-26T15:38:00.000+01:00

I came across a note that I had written some time ago. The title to the note is 'driveby contribution'. This is a concept that Matt Asay talks about. To him it is a way of building a project where people can contribute the small element they need to and then leave the project. Unknowingly I facilitated this type of action when dealing with an institution who have installed WebPA.

In order for said institution to get the code working for them, they modified a line or two of code related to the LDAP authentitcation. As I am sure you can apeiciate being the current active developer on the project I can not always ensure that the code I write will always work for everyone. This was such a case - the code worked with Active directory but not with the set up that the other insitution has. The developer there was able to get the code working with the addition of a few lines. In order to let me know everything was OK the developer told me he had made the changes. I then requested that he sent me a patch. As usual I was not explicit in sending him to the source forge area, so I recieved it in my in box.

From this I, when I saw my note, it then triggered thoughts of what else can we do as a project to get more of this driveby contribution. The usual being create a modular system that people can develop elements for... but there must be other things that can be done. All I can think of is documentation and this then leds to other articles that I have read on generating community contribution[1]. I will keep looking to see what else other projects are doing and see if there is any other elements of 'driveby contribution' that can be tapped into for WebPA.

[1] http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/07/06/rethinking-community-documentation.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/06/14/why-do-people-write-free-documentation-results-of-a-survey.html

Feeding user needs into WebPA

2007-10-22T11:04:00.000+01:00

Over the years that WebPA has developed, at Loughborough University, the users have always requested new features to be added. This developed into a long list of academic wishes, but it has so far not been evaluated to show if the whole user community requires the features listed. Now, seems an appropriate time as the project are looking to update the road map.

The road map document lets the projects community members see where the project is intending to go for the next phase of work. WebPA tries to update the road map every six months of the projects current funding period. I hope that in this phase the community needs for WebPA will be more clearly reflected in the development to take place.

In order to ensure that the community needs are reflected the current wish list was sent to all active users at Loughborough University. The community where sent a list of requirements that had previously be gathered and asked to select their top three. If their most important requirements where not on the list the community was asked to feed back what they needed. From all the emails sent there has been a 23% response rate. While this is not wonderful it is sufficient, well we aren't going to statistically analyse the information. From this I have identified a list of requirements to take the development of WebPA forward while ensuring the users needs are met. These requirements may not be pedagogically sound in most cases, but as an open source project I think that we can be forgiven this if we are meeting user need.

I do think that it will be interesting to re do this task as the project community grows. But in that growth I feel that more work will be needed to ensure that the community of users are aware of the WebPA sourceforge area, and how features can be requested.

WebPA intergration with VLEs

2007-10-16T09:46:00.000+01:00

I have in the past twenty four hours been asked about the projects plans to develop integration modules for a particular VLE. I knew that this question would arrive eventually, but I still found my self relatively under prepared to answer it.

What I should be doing is asking the person who sent the query to then develop the solution. That is how open source software works, right. But this is also a project with deliverables which in the perfect world have to be met. I also don't want to scare our potential pilot institutions away from the project. As a result I did reply with a concise statement "that this may be considered in the future". But there are a lot more VLEs than one, so I do desperately need the contribution to the project.

At the beginning of the week I read an article about how to run a successful open source project by approaching the development modularly. This is said to encourage users to write their own plug ins. This method has been a success for other open source project such as Mozilla FireFox, Drupal etc. But from a little investigation this is also a successful model for established software companies and one in particular Blackboard, where the community contribute "building blocks". As a result of this, I really need to be encouraging the current developing user community into becoming a contribution community, creating these needed plug ins/modules/widgets.

I have a feeling this maybe more successful than I thought it would. With the Web 2.0 movement, especially in Education, more and more individuals are developing these little code elements to accomplish tasks they need doing. Therefore, in an ideal world, those individuals should be happy enough to add modules for WebPA. This then has a knock on effect for me... I need to now go and assess the code to see how easy it will be for individuals to contribute. I will also need to make the changes to the system in order for this to work. Even if we do not see the benefits now, I hope that we see them some where in the future.

NOTE: I initiated a conversation on the Community-Development JISCmail list. The full conversation to date can be found at http://jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/COMMUNITY-DEVELOPMENT.html

Measuring the success of WebPA

2007-10-15T09:36:00.000+01:00

Last week I attended a JISC workshop on evaluating JISC funded projects. Although a lot of the evaluation seemed to be steered towards the student experience, it did raise a number of points related to evaluating the project. These are especially valid for those projects where a large proportion is related to the development of software.

In the past I have sat in no end of meetings where evaluation has been discussed, and the software is quite often overlooked, or in many cases the evaluation of software is not understood. I have seen no end of project submissions where the evaluation for the software produced is out lined in terms of "the code will be peer reviewed" but as an opensource project that will happen over time and will be carried out by the community that develops for the project rather that a nominated project or organisation. Anyway getting back to the software the evaluation should be in relation to how widely the system is now used and the attitudes of those using the system.

One phrase that came out of the workshop which has stuck with me is "Metrics for Managers". I think this is a good place to start to highlight the types of information that can show the success of WebPA (after all it will be a success). For those who are interested in what WebPA can do for the institution we need to look at the student retention rates, rather that the rather softer student experience. By evaluation the retention rates we may be able to show that with the use of WebPA for peer assessment, the retention rates increase. However, this may be far in advance of what can be done in the time remaining for the delivery of this project.

There are other measures that we can use for the evaluation of WebPA, link the ones that I have highlighted in the past with out even thinking about evaluation. We are already able to collect data related to the download rate of WebPA, we just need to be able to marry this back in to the number of Institutions across the UK and then by sector that have adopted WebPA. This is more difficult that it may seem to begin with. For a start yes we can find out the number of downloads for the software we are receiving (12 to date), but due to the privacy policy for Sourceforge I can not find out any information about who is downloading. This then leads on to the second element, how will we know who is adopting WebPA either on an institutional level or individually in their teaching. The only what of measuring this will be the metrics that we can gather from other areas of the sourceforge system and form contact that we have with institutions and academics. But I do think that these metrics will be in some cases difficult to obtain and also miss out some vital information, however, they will be useful anyway.

Even though evaluation is normally left till the end of the project I think the JISC timing for this event was appropriate. I think that it will trigger project teams to start thinking about what they can evaluate and how, in turn this will enable the teams to start collecting data sooner, rather than scraping around for information and trying to make it fit towards the conclusion of the project funding.

Can we produce a green software project

2007-10-11T09:24:00.000+01:00

Just recently there has been lots of talk and drum beating in the IT press([1]-[5]) about making software more green. But what does it mean? What has to be done to produce green software? Does it mean a vast change in development practices? Or is it all just about the hardware!

Those of you who have met me will know that I try to ensure I do my bit for the environment and that I care about where my food comes from. But as a software and hardware consumer I have only really made token efforts to be green in this area of life. Where I can I do try to recycle my old computers and components around my family before passing the machines on to Charity's that can then make further use of them. As for software I have tried to use open source where possible, but that is more to do with the concept than being green.

But what is green software. To me it is about changing practice ever so slightly. I think of reuse where possible. This means that I am being more efficient and the code I develop can be reused not only by myself, but also by my colleagues and the wider community. We are an open source development project after all.

But is there any opportunity to go further? Well I think so, one consideration should be; do we need to have paper copies of everything that is produced, or is publishing online sufficient. Hang on, does this then pass the printing dilemma on to the person who wishes to read the report or document? But is that the projects responsibility?

We could also consider a vast wealth of other possible things that we could do as a project including; how we travel, how we hold meetings (do we really need to travel or can we hold the meeting online), what the institution we are based in is doing generally etc. The list could go on and on, but I do think that it is something that we can all consider and it may just also improve how software is developed and run.

[1] http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/07/21/green_software_possibility/
[2] http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2192101/intel-google-join-green
[3] http://www.flex888.com/2007/05/16/top-6-solutions-to-make-green-software.html
[4] http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2193461/green-initiatives-exercise
[5] http://www.greensoftware.org/

Getting there slowly

2007-10-08T13:19:00.000+01:00

I am in the process at the moment of supporting a number of institutions with their own installations of WebPA.

The first institution is well on their way to getting the installation complete. However, I am not to clear on what version/revision of WebPA they are using, so supporting any queries that come in is interesting, as I can not tell if I have previously fixed the problem.

The others are also on their way to getting an installation, which is really exciting. But again, the issues that come through the door are always directed to me, rather than through the WebPAsourceforge area . This leaves me to add the information to the trackers myself. At the moment this is okay, as there are not to many requests. I am encouraging the users to use the sourceforge system, so every time I email back with the solution I endeavor to include tracking information, as well in, the hope that at some point they will use the system.

The other major success that has occurred over the weekend is the number of downloads of WebPA we have had. I released a version of WebPA as a download on Friday 5 October, since then we have had five downloads. To me this is good going, but only time will tell if it is a success.

Are we a community project?

2007-09-27T09:27:00.000+01:00

I have been listening to the latest 'Open Season' on 'the Register' and they are discussing Yahoos purchase of Zimbra, but they keep coming back to the marketing and the type of open source projects that are around. One of the terms that I keep picking up on is 'community project'. At the moment I am not too sure what a community project is. I have done a quick search on google and there is no defined definition. But what exactly is a community project?

Well I understand a community project to be a project that benefits a particular group of people by fulfilling a specific task that is common to all. From this I see a CoP developing around the project and I think this is the way that I hope WebPA is moving.

The other concept that I picked up on that may help define a 'community project' is the user base. From my understanding a community project within the open source world seems to measured by the number of users that the project has. For me this maybe a negative view of projects. For example WebPA will never have a user base say the size of Moodle, but that should not mean that we are not a successful community project.

As the open source movement continues to develop at the rapid speed that it does I think the original value of open source may be lost.

Blogs and other Web2.0 tecnologies

2007-09-21T11:40:00.000+01:00

I have just come across a workshop which is being run by the UKOLN related to the use of blogs and other Web2.o technologies in education and research projects. More information can be found here: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/blogs-social-networks-2007/

Have I finally stopped talking to myself

2007-09-21T10:43:00.000+01:00

Have we a break through, have I finally stopped talking to my self on the JISCmail list? Well it is a possibility, or I have just touched a nurve. For months I have been posting comments and questions to our fledgling community via the JISCmail list I set up for the project as part of the task to develop a CoP (Community of Practise). Unitl reciently everything I posted has gone unanswerd or has been answered off line. That is till I posted something about the feedback mechanism in WebPA.

Although I was aware that the feedback system had been created quickly, and there had been one or two negative experiences with it. However, the community seem to feel strongly about the mechanism and the wording that is used. The conversation is active at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/quicktype.cgi?m so feel free to join in and add your point to the melting pot. I hope that we will get some really good ideas and points from the community that can be added to the project for hopeful inclusion in the open source releases of WebPA.

If you don't want to join the conversation you can email me directly or add your feature request to the source forge [http://sourceforge.net/projects/webpa/] area for the project.

I will let you know how our CoP (community of practice) developes and the tools that we are using, but for the moment I will chalk this down as a sucess!

Matt Asay's view to open source in the UK

2007-09-14T10:03:00.000+01:00

This morning I logged on to my iGoogle page to read the headlines to the blogs that interest me and saw this title on Matt Asay's blog 'No one in the UK wants to work in open source ... or tech, for that matter'. This made my blood began to boil, as I thought, what about me and the other people I know. When I read further into the blog he was mainly discussing the lack of graduates entering any companies other that the big conglomerates. But this is a look at a very small cross section of the whole technology industry in the UK. So I decided that I would make myself heard, and rely. But as will most things this was going to require creating yet another account to a system I will possibly only use this once. Instead I did a quick search on the web and have subsequently emailed him directly (yes it has made me that frustrated). Below is the main content of my email.

I agree that graduates do tend to go for the big institutions for employment, but I believe that it is institutionalised advice from Universities, well it was when I graduated and from what I see from the inside still is.

However, there are companies out there taking risks, mainly with grants for funding from the DTI, the EU and what used to be the small business service, including the company I worked for before heading in to a university. Admittedly some of the work never really gets beyond the initial funding, or even out into the open source arena. But like me there are people all over, especially in the HE sector trying to change the system. I do think that is some small way we are winning, as in HE the institutions are seeing open source as a way of adding a feather in their cap. Hence how the project I am working on was allowed to go a head. But again this is only due to a funding stream from the JISC, who have almost made it a requirement to be open source.

Even with these opportunities, as the concept of open source is not really understood by those making the high level decisions in universities in particular, the culture is all wrong. This then affects the sustainability of the projects once the funding has ended. But there are people out there trying to change both the system and the cultures, mainly thanks to the work of Randy Metcalf, and now Ross Gardler, and the lads at OSS-Watch (http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/). Due to them I no longer feed isolated as they have set up a community which is thriving.

But things are changing just really slowly and more emphasis is being given to entrepreneurship on all courses, so graduates may soon take the risks. Also business in the UK may change if we in the educational sector can show that being part of an open source project can bring credence, a sustainable business model and success.

Anyway rant over, but it really just got my goat. I will put something on my blog about this in hope that more people will debate what can be done to get the UK out of this negativity towards open source.

I will let you know if I hear anything back, but I am not expecting to.

Assessment and feedback

2007-09-13T08:50:00.000+01:00

Today the BBC are running an interesting story about assessment and in particular feedback from the student perspective. Well really they are just reporting on the TQI survey results. But it is interesting to see where the project partners are in the list.

The report, however, has shown that the weakest responses to the survey questions where in relation to assessment and feedback. This is where we on the WebPA project see the benefits of using our tool. This way if the tool is used formatively then you may be able to increase the level of feedback the students are receiving. But as with anything the use of WebPA should be used in moderation other wise students may feel swamped with assessment, as in schools.

At the moment I have been discussing the feedback that WebPA provides at the moment to see if we can improve it. One of the issues that has been raised about the feedback mechanism here at Loughborough is due to the lack of understanding that the academic users have about the system. I have found that once the mechanism is explained then they are more comfortable with the current method. However, one of the major hurdles is not what and how the feedback is given, but what is it for and why do academics want it. If we could fathom this out then we could improve the feedback so that it can be used effectively and possibly then fed into the PDP for the students. These are the types of questions that we will pose to our fledgling community of practice when appropriate.

However, we still will need to gather how feedback is provided to students and how it is formulated to help us assess how best we can provide the feedback for WebPA. Any pointers in the right direction are always welcomed.

ALT-C the day so far

2007-09-04T13:16:00.000+01:00

So far this morning ALT-C has been quite interesting. The key note did not seem to be relevant to the work that I do. However, as it progresses more and more elements seemed to be relevant. One element in particular was related to the gap between assessment at school and then in HE. I wonder if there is a model of use for WebPA, to bridge this gap.

I have also attended the networking event chaired by Ronda and Tom. For me this has been one of the most beneficial sessions so far. Even though the session was not too full, I think that everyone there really benefited from the time to meet new faces. I have met a number of new faces so far to day as well as seeing some people that I haven't seen in a while.

To day so far has also been good as a catch up with some people I haven't seen in a while as well as Rene from the university of Derby, who is to host WebPA for us.

The only element that I have found strange is the titles for the sessions and also the abstracts do not always reflect the content of the presentation and so far I have been disappointed by one in particular. I had been hopeing to take the lessons learned and apply them in practice for the WebPA project.

At the moment as everyone is rushing to the next session I am sitting writing this before I am going to go over my presentation so that I will be ready at 5.

Consider blogs as a community of practice

2007-09-03T15:16:00.000+01:00

I am heading off to ALT-C 2007 tomorrow, as those of you who read this blog will be aware of. Apart from going over my slides and what I will be saying at 5, I have also taken the time to read some of the information on the ALT-C conference amplifier feed.

I have to say that, there are only some people posting about ALT-C, the rest seems to be about what people already have on their blogs. Even though a lot of this information is out of date, some of it is interesting. I have found some one linking to an article about blogs and communities of practice, from 2004. I think that the conference amplification is a form of blogs becoming communities of practice even if for only a short time (ie the time frame for the conference). All we need to do now is to try and maintain that community of practice some where. Even though I like the fluidity of the conference amplification system.

It leads me back to how we can build and maintain a community of practice for WebPA and whether we can organise to get an amplification going for an event that the Subject Centres are hoping to hold. But what are the next steps to holding on to that community of practice...

I have to say that some of the best conference amplification I have seen has been for the @media conferences. You can see the effects at Flickr and on technorati. May be I will be able to find similar examples for ALT-C by tomorrow.

Please let me know if you do blog about WebPA or you intend to mention us somewhere as I will then try to set up a 'feed of feeds' or even a Yahoo! pipe. But again this may be transient, rather than sustained...we need to develop a sustained amplification for our project.

Getting ready for Alt-C

2007-08-30T13:49:00.000+01:00

I have run over my presentation with a colleague this morning and I feel only a little more positive about it. In the past I have always written presentations on the fly, ie on my way to the meeting, so this is a real novelty to be really ready. But the test will be on Tuesday at 5 when my slot is.

I have spent some time as well looking at ALT-C 2007 website as well having never been to this conference before. I am struggling to work out what sessions to attend. I think that the first session that I will attend will be the speed workshop. Following that I may pick up on some of the sessions related to one of my biggest interests which is accessibility online. Further on I have no idea what sessions I will attend, but I do know that I will be at the ceilidh and the gala dinner. Any ideas of what to do while at ALT-C would be greatly received.

Writting presentations

2007-08-20T15:19:00.000+01:00

Today I am having a real memory block. I am trying to write my presentation for the short paper that I submitted to ALT-C back in February, right at the start of the project. It seems an age ago and the usability research I did back then seems to have filtered out of my ears and been replaced with all the other information that I am collecting as the project progresses.

However, in having to revisit the project documents it has highlighted that this is a reusable model that I have created. As we get closer to having WebPA piloted at other institutions, it has highlighted that we need repeat the usability testing with our partner institution. Even though the model is geared up to using approximately 5 users I think it is worth doing with each institution, no matter the number of users available.

So here I am, writing my Blog and avoiding getting this presentation right. May be I will leave it till tomorrow and look at it with fresh eyes. But getting back to this presentation. I have only 15 mins to try and convey not only the research and reasons that back up this method, but also the method itself. I am also a great believer that the slide in a presentation should not be just solid text. Following HCI rules that are relevant to usability of either software or even presentations in this case 7 +/- 2 items seems to be a good guide. Another good guide is to take the number of minutes that you have to present in and divide by two. All of this means that I only have maybe 7 or 8 slides, of which there should be no more that 9 points. As you can see I have set myself the most unrealistic target to start with. But I still don't think I can get everything included in. So why I am writingwriting it this early! Especially as in two weeks or so I will have completely forgotten everything I have written today. Right back to the presentation before home.

When can you say you have done enough testing

2007-08-16T09:14:00.000+01:00

Being the only developer on an open source project at the moment, I have all the roles to perform as part of the software development process. These roles include being the developer, developing the code and carrying out the testing to ensure that the code works as specified. But also being the testing team as well, doing all the formalised testing.

From my days at university and my module on testing I can only remember so much. But which testing should I be doing. From my point of view I can not sufficiently carry out any white box testing, even though I know all the internal code and workings of the system. But as with all things in life time is short, even though there are tools out there such as phpunit, but do I have enough time to work out how it works and then devote the time to implementing the testing routines. I think that it would be very beneficial for the project in the future to have this formalised unit testing, but at the moment it may be just a bit too much for one person.

However, there are other forms of testing, including black box testing. As there is more focus on what the system user sees and experiences, then I think that this is more important. This importance comes from the type of project that we are and also in that we want to build a community around our tool. Although accuracy is important in the algorithm that is used to create the scores for the students, I can fairly, happily say that this has been repeatedly tested and verified in the use of WebPA at Loughborough University.

So now I have worked out the direction in which the testing should go, when can I say I have done enough to ensure I meet the release criteria (which I have defined). How many of the steps of the testing process do I need to fulfill in order to guarantee that the software has been sufficiently tested, are there any steps that I can miss. Oh, and how does this fit in with the development methodology that was chosen for the project, which is agile.

At the moment I have carried out over 30 distinct documented tests, and subsequently corrected the code. Is this enough to move to the rest of the quality assurance process? Do I need to do more? How much time have I left to do any further testing? I have no definite answer for any of my questions, and I seem to face the same questions everything I work on a large project, with out the back up of a testing and QA team. I will just have to rely on time constraints and gut feeling for now.

PHP and the require_once() function to name one issue

2007-08-08T14:01:00.000+01:00

I have been battling for a number of months to try and get WebPA into a state so that it will work when installed on any platform. My first steps have been to try and remove all of the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] references and replace them with relative links. I wanted everything to be linked relatively as you can then take a web application from one server and place it on to another with out having to go through all of the code to make it work. Yes I know that PHPites like to use the inbuilt server variables where possible, which can be good, but in the case of porting an application to a Microsoft based architecture will cause all kind of problems.

Once I changed all of the code to relative links, everything began to go wrong. But it appears that it is not just going wrong for me, this appears to be a common problem with PHP. If you do a Google search you will come up with a plethora of similar postings where people are suffering similar problems. At the moment I am trying to find a solution to the problem. I need to locate a work around that will suffice as WebPA needs to be easy to install, even by some one with little to no technical knowledge. My solution has been to user ‘./’ (dot forward-slash) to take me directly to the application root, load the global include file on its path and then, as others do, define my own DOC__ROOT. But am I there am I hell.

Although I get the login page on a WAMP and also on the MAMP set-ups, when I try to login then I get the same error message. However, when I run everything on a LAMP set-up, I get a completely different error all together. Well saying that all the errors are all related again to the require_once function in PHP.

Eventully I found the solution thanks to the folks who post fixes on the php manual pages. It isn't the most elegent of solutions, but it works. As of today I can say WebPA will work on all configurations that I can think of.

Sourceforge an adventure into the unknown

2007-08-06T12:58:00.000+01:00

Although I have used Sourceforge for a number of years to locate applications and also find fixes to the said applications, I tended to be a list squatter, only interacting anonymously. But now with this project I am having to learn all the nuances of the systems and how to administer them.

Even though Sourceforge may not be the best repository to put our project into it is one of the most well know, as I have already mentioned in a previous blog post. So it is better the devil you know etc... My first delve into Sourceforge was a number of months back now when I registered my self and then the project. This simple straight forward and painless. Sourceforge stated that it may be hours to days before the project was registered, in our case it was accepted and live within hours of the submission. Feeling really chuffed I didn't really touch anything else for a bit. Yes I know that if the project is to be successful the more activity needs to take place, but hey I'm one developer on a funded project, with enough work to do without sitting on Sourceforge.

Anyway, my next delve was to set up a list for feature requests and set up the few other lists for people to use when the project moved forward again. This was still a painless process... But just last week I decided that I really should be using Sourceforge to store all the code, so I bit the bullet and began. In my past roles I had used CVS, and at home we set up SVN so how hard can it be! Well this was just the beginning of the pain and some self inflicted!

After diligently sitting and reading through all of the instructions on Sourceforge, and then down loading and reading the instructions for tortoisesvn. I tried my first upload of the information, which didn't work! I went through all of the information again trying to find out what I had done wrong. Eventually I worked out my error, as I didn't read one element of the document, mainly due to the statement at the top of the section that said new users of the subversion system did not need to read it. However, the answer to my problem was within this section...the URL structure!

It was a little after my initial jubilation of getting the code on to Sourceforge that a colleague pointed out that I had not edited the config file. At this point I had uploaded a couple of URLs and passwords that I did not want public. This is when the real pain started...

I knew from reading the documentation that deleting anything was going to be difficult. My next set of pain started closely after when my brain let me down and my historical knowledge of *nix machines reared its ugly head. Here I was sat at work scratching my head, I had managed to make a connection with putty, and back-up the repository, I just couldn't work out how to get the subversion admin filter to work, or locate exactly where I was in the file structure. At this point it seemed best to go home and get my hands on all the better tools I have there.

Once at home I soon followed the instructions, and then requested Sourceforge run the data import for me. As with setting the project up on Souceforge this took no time at all. But I did get a error...after rereading everything again I was trying to run the import on files which where not in the correct place. Once this was figured out then the files where moved and the import request process run again. This time everything was successful, for the import at least, but I had just uploaded all the incorrect data again. I went through the information again, worked out how to get the svn version I wanted, and went through everything again, this time with the successful out come that I required.

Once I got passed the fact the documentation is mainly written for people who use systems like this, day in day, out and expect anyone using the system will have the same knowledge and experience, it is actually straight forward. Administering the rest of the site has been fairly easy once you start thinking the way they want you to. But I do get the odd moment, like this morning when I lost a request that had come in. I have since found it again, but only through starting again.

If you are interested at looking at the Sourceforge area for the project, you will find it at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/webpa/

What has happened to July

2007-07-31T11:08:00.000+01:00

OK we are on the last day of the month and usually by this point I will have posted as many as four posts, but as you can see this month is some what lacking. Well there is a good reason for this, as many of you know me will know that I have been really ill over the past few weeks. I seem to be on the mend again and have made it back into work.

However, nothing has been static on the project! In my absence Paul Newman has stepped in and more or less saved the day. As a result we have been able to send off a copy of WebPA to the University of Derby. The University of Derby are our first pilot institution. As I find out how they are doing with the installation of the system I will of course post information to here.

Getting this far has not been an easy road though. Some of the major barrier have not been to do with the systems code but rather with PHP itself. One problem in PHP is related to the inclusion of files. Within WebPA we use 'require_once' which is built on include. However, their is a problem including files with the relative path. As WebPA needs to be cross platform this has been a serious issue. PHP has been corrected for the latest release, but we as a project can not guarantee that everyone will be using this. At the moment we seem to be able to make thing work. At present I have WebPA running on the MacBook Pro, but not within the local user sites area. Once I have this fixed, I will try the code on the LAMP server and then on a machine I have set up at home running WAMP. Once I am certain that the system is working on all the architecture configurations that I can easily lay my hands on then I will make a public release available via the projects sourceforge page.

As for sourceforge, I'm still not convinced that this is the best location to serve the projects downloads from (see an earlier post). I am watching the Simal project as they are using the Google code tool and I can always ask them how it is going. But as of yet I am still to find an alternative (apart from hosting a suite of tools here at Loughborough).

One other thing that has happened in my absence is that the project has visited another potential pilot institution. However, as expected we are faced with some institutional barrier. These barriers include; academic uptake of the tool, availability of server space and skills to implement the system locally. Due to this we may need to look at approaching other institutions with in England, where there is less of a barrier to adoption. For now though I will have to return to doing my day to day work and get the system out, as we need to 'release early, release often!'

Will a Wiki Work for WebPA

2007-06-27T10:32:00.000+01:00

I have to confess that I am not one of the worlds most avid fan of Wiki’s. Although there are some very well used Wiki’s out there , for example Wikipedia, we have all seen the headlines related to information reliability issues. My other experiences of Wiki’s have been looking at a lot of information, spread all over the place, not linked up, time consuming to read and full of one individuals opinions. So when I was asked to look into developing a Wiki for WebPA I was not all that convinced.

I have tried to go into this open minded and think about this from a community, and knowledge base perspective. From this I do have concerns that it will need to be policed. I know that this is not the best term to use, but look at it from my point of view, some one has to manage the wiki. Also who is our community and what exactly will the wiki be used for?

From the discussion that has lead to this point; the user of the wiki will be an academic who will be documenting something about WebPA. This is where the policing begins, what happens if something negative is written about the project that is either unfounded or unjustified. But hang on, what is this something. I think that before any more talk or discussion of producing a wiki continues we need to define what will the something be.

At the moment the only something that I can think of is case studies about using WebPA in teaching. If this is correct maybe there are better ways in which this information can be conveyed. Also there are other considerations, such as, do we want anyone in the community to be able to change this information. My immediate reaction to this is that we would not want changes to be made. Therefore a wiki is not the right place for this to happen.

Other examples of wikis that I have seen have been used for conversation. But again as a project is this where we want discussion to take place. Again a wiki is not the correct tool for discussion to be carried out on. We have a mailing list, which anyone can join and the achieves are openly available. Hence the mailing list is the correct tool and a wiki an incorrect tool.

As you can tell I am really struggling to justify having a WebPA wiki. My last shot at why one might be used is in the development of project documentation and decision making. But again I have trouble with this. Open source project definitely need to be open on decision making, but from advice received this should be facilitated through discussion, and as I have said, discussion should be on the mailing list. As for a documentation location. I’m still not convinced. I have lost countless hour searching sites trying to find the documentation I want with no avail. I also worry that it will become a dumping ground for unintelligible information. There are other routes through which the documentation can be conveyed in a more controlled and usable method. At the moment the documentation for WebPA is within the ‘project resources’ section of this website as many of the documents are related to the deliverables that the project must produce. There are also other tools for holding the documentation related to the projects open source area.

As this open source area is developed over the course of the project then I will blog about what is happening and how I get on. But for now, I don’t think investing my project time in implementing and policing a wiki is the best for the project. However, I am still willing to be convinced other wise, but it will have to be a well justified reason and not just because someone thinks it is a good idea or that other projects are using one.

Has Sourceforge become a project grave yard?

2007-06-21T10:31:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I attended a workshop run by OSS-Watch on building communities. For us as a young open source project it was really useful to get the opinions of the community that we work within but never really think of as a community!

One area that was covered, within the break-out group I was in, was the fact that Sourceforge is seen as a grave yard for projects. This was felt to be especially true for some of the JISC funded projects. These projects are perceived to be added to Sourceforge at the end of the funding and left. As there has been no community built up around the project then this will always happen. However, I feel that there are attitudes that need to be changed rather than policy.

Yesterday, I heard the usual statements of if we release our software early then if it is bad or doesn’t work people will not come back. There was also comments about code belonging to developers. From what I understand of the open source process and community there has been a lot of work done in these areas. It is not just OSS-Watch who have been writing and promoting this concept, Google searches are full of people talking about the concept, and now even mathematicians are getting in on the act. I feel that I sit in the ‘bazaar’ rather than ‘cathedral’ camp even if we are yet to make our first release. So for me this is the first attitude that needs to be altered.

As for code belonging this is an odd concept. For me as an employee, I do not own anything that I do at work. I signed my contract and read the small print. Academic is no different from Industry for this. Due to this I really do not see why some developers become so attached to their code. This though seems to be a common problem for all open source development. I can find examples of large communities (e.g. Eclipse) writing about getting committers to let-go. There seems to be a lack of research in this area, but this could be related to control being an accepted area of development.

With all this, is it no wonder that some of the projects on Sourceforge are no longer really alive and vibrant. It may be that attitudes need to be changed in how they view and see Sourceforge. This then brings us to another idea/ concept that was raised yesterday, do we need another ‘forge’ area for JISC projects. My feeling is that there is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ as there is a danger that anything new or similar will end up as a grave yard for JISC projects. This leaves one route to go down, which is to change attitudes. Whether this is the best course of action only time will tell, if this route is take.

Getting back after a holiday

2007-06-15T10:31:00.000+01:00

I have had some time off to have a holiday and have returned this week, kind of minus the jet lag! This means for me though, jumping straight back into the frying pan of meetings, events and the day to day work load that I have. We have also had the engCETL away day to break the week up. But my main emphasis this week has been in organising a demo area of WebPA to trial a workshop with.

Next Monday we are running our first ever workshop with some of the support staff here at Loughborough. The whole concept of the workshop has been two fold. Firstly we need to get some of the staff who support the lecturers here up to speed and confident. From this we hope that they will be able to support the lecturers in learning to use WebPA and also to help us improve the support documentation, as well as building the community of users.

So far I think that we are almost as ready as possible. I have little packs of information for all of the participants. These packs include a guide to WebPA for academics and a two page over view for students. There is also a supplementary information document with further information about peer and self assessment. To cap the information pack off we have copies of the tasks that need to be done in the workshop and a feedback form. Hopefully everyone in attendance will provide us with positive feedback, as on the 2 July we are going to re run the workshop up at the University of Derby.

The 2 July is the first of a number of days over the summer when we will be out and about trying to build the WebPA community. In this process we hope to get more institutions to host WebPA for their academics. From this we hope to build a community of users. If you would like to know more about getting us to come and talk about WebPA or would just like to keep up to date with what is happening then you will need to join or mailing list.

Also talking about building communities the WebPA team are going to be attending the OSS Watch workshop next Wednesdays(20 June) to try and learn more on how we can build our community and to learn from those who are looking to achieve the same thing or have achieved our goal.

Getting LDAP working

2007-05-25T10:30:00.000+01:00

Ok now, I have read about LDAP on and off for years but I have never reached a point where I needed to write some code. That is till now. The current version of WebPA is authenticated by Loughborough University’s own bespoke script. But this is no good if we are going to open source the system. Therefore after a fairly swift poll of the project partner and the other potential pilot the opportunity to use LDAP arose.

PHP has LDAP fully integrated and it is just a case of creating a connection and pointing the call at the LDAP server. However obtaining information like “What is the server address ?“ can be difficult with in institutions. Information like this is often a closely guarded secret. However in the end I did find out the information I wanted to know. So I could get straight on and test my code.

The first problem I encountered was, not being able to bind to the server with my username and password. I scratched my head for a bit and thought. Some times as a developer you can be completely in isolation even if you share an office with others who write in your language, especially if you are the first to implement something. That is how I have felt all week. Eventually I did have a eureka moment and figure out that I needed to add the domain elements on to the username I was entering. I should have known this as I did do networks at Uni, but as with things you learn along time ago, the disappear form you head.

However, no sooner than my eureka moment and then I was back in the doldrums again. I could bind but not search! I had an idea of what was in the LDAP tree, but could not be sure. In the end my search lacks a filter, thus pulls back the whole tree for the variable I’m interested in. But that is a success, and I now have a LDAP authentication class that I can just plug into WebPA, and an almost complete design document, so I am happy this week.

Next week will be here all too soon and I will need to try and do a weeks worth of work in one day, so that I can get off on my holidays with no worries. I know that this will never happen, and I will still leave some things incomplete.

Over complicating things from the start

2007-05-15T10:30:00.000+01:00

Why is it when you start to program something you have all these really good ideas. All I need to do is write a file upload that then takes the contents and adds the information to the database. I could have made it really strict and completed each file upload as an individual task. But no I decided to do it all from one page. This means that the page looks quite good, with the type of file that will be uploaded and a radio button for the type of information that is to be uploaded.

However, this is now giving me a headache! I have made it overly complicated. None of the information is necessarily the same. Two of the groups of data are almost the same so that is fairly easy. I do need to take the final element of data off as it is related to the module and that has to be run as a separate insert. Unless I can find another way around this. Hopefully I will get this completed by the end of the week. The my next task is to plug into the code the authentication for LDAP. I have working files and just need to add them. Once I have done this I will need to write some test plans and then carry out the tests.

For the testing I can’t decide whether to use one of the agile methods for writing the test scripts or to use another method. Some of the story testing looks an interesting way of planning and delivering testing modules such as FIT. For now though I think that I may just stick with simple module tests.

Raring to go

2007-05-10T10:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve had my very short holiday of a week, where I achieved nothing that I wanted. However, my first day back at work has been a raring success. As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, I set up another meeting with OSS-Watch. This time it was all about building communities. Just to make sure that we are getting our moneys worth out of OSS-Watch (not that we pay) I asked some colleagues here at Loughborough if they would like to join the WebPA team for a couple of hours and sit in.

Everyone who attended to find out about Communities has given positive feedback. People have said that they wished they had been able to give more time to attending the afternoon session, to find out more.

As for our project I think that it has been very beneficial on a number of levels. Firstly I have a clearer idea of how we can go about expanding the developing community and the directions that we can take this group. Also as a project it has identified that there are key areas that need to be sorted out now so that progressing the project in the area of communities will be easier. I has also highlighted to the WebPA team some of the routes that the project can take as exit strategies or (a better term) project sustainability from when the funding runs out.

As with licensing, everything can be changed in the future. Yes, you know it there is a BUT. Well here it is, what ever type of structure that we identify know can have an effect in the future if we decide to change it. I will try to keep everyone informed as to what the final decisions are made. I hope that the other members of the WebPA project who where there today found will help inform the decisions that have to be made.

Anyway back to the now. I have lots of work to do, and lots to digest. However as it goes a successful day, just now need to put everything learn into practice.

Juggling too much…

2007-04-24T10:28:00.000+01:00

Well since Easter I have not had any time to add more detail to the JISC report which should have been completed for the beginning of April (project month six). Hopefully this will not drag on to long and the rest of the team can get it completed before month seven of the project, as the back bone of the report is in place and all that needs to happen is the addition of some information.
I am also setting up another meeting with the folks at OSS-Watch about Communities within the open source arena. So far everthing is looking set. I have invited some other people to the first half of the meeting related to what communities are and how they can be developed. The second half of the meeting will be for the project only. Hopefully we will be able to develop all the elements that are needed to manage the communities.

With all this going on I can not forget the code. I think that we have sorted out the admin section. The basic functionality has been worked out, elements of the database have been identified for Refactoring. However, work has come to a halt as I do not have access to the database of the server to begin this task. So as with everything at the beginning of a project you can only get so far, and then something halts your progress. I would do this work on the apple laptop, but with everything else I have not had time to set it up properly.

There is more as well. I’m in the middle of trying to finalise the IPR register for this point in the project. Get the Consortium agreement finalised, before it can be passed out to the appropriate persons for signing. As with everything related to agreements and IPR, there is a distinct lack of understanding as to the amount of work that needs to be completed. There is also a distinct lack of understanding as to why this can be so important to the project and its potential success.

Anyway, I’m going off to explore putty so that I can set up the source forge area for the project (more about this later).

Easter approaches... no chocolate yet!

2007-04-03T10:27:00.000+01:00

Easter is gaining… and there is so much to do before I can stop for Easter, all be it for only 4 days or so.

In the past week or so, I have been to Hull University for a meeting with Robert. We have managed to get a swim lane based road map laid out, even if it is just as photos at the moment. One of my tasks has to be to get this into a more meaningful manor. As soon as I manage to do that it will be made available through the website.

I have also been reminded of many of the aspect that still need to be sorted in relation to the IPR and open source licence. Hopefully we will get further after a meeting with the Universities IPR office on Thursday. When we have final lift off and everything is sorted I will post all the information to this website.

In the mean time the code writing is still all chugging away in the time in between everything else. For the past two days I have been looking in to getting and LDAP function written. I did think that this would be an uphill struggle. I never realised that it would be so simple. At the moment I have authentication working at Loughborough, only the basic bind with the user name and password. I do want to get a more complex authentication running and to be able to pull back some of the users information that is held in LDAP. The first thing that I have done through is try and find out if the university have a test area I can run everything against.

I have also been quietly trying to design how the administration section for the open source version will run. One of my first points has been to confirm what type of information that will be required about the students for the system. When this is all sorted on paper I will begin making the changes to the database and then begin implementing the code. But all you really care about is when you will be able to access an open source version, even if it is limited in some ways…well it looks like we will be on track for the beginning of the summer still.

So much to say and do...

2007-03-23T09:27:00.000Z

Yesterday was the first advisory board that I have attended since joining the project. It was nice to see all the familiar faces and also a new one (one I haven’t met before). I feel that yesterdays advisory board meeting was really productive and informative. There are always more thing you learn from having everyone in one room.

I also carried out a usability test yesterday which was really successful, it has given me an insight into how differently each of the users is using the system, as it is the second that I have done personally. I knew from the start of the project we would need to support lost of different users, but I never realised how diverse their attitudes and uses of the systems was. This is just adding to my list of things to think about.

From comments made at the advisory board, there is international interest in the WebPA system as well as national. I did think that at some point down the line we would internationalise WebPA, but as a result of the comments made yesterday this may have to be done sooner, rather than later. I now need to brush up on how to get this achieved. I need to look at the PHP internationalization and character set encoding. I don’t think the character set encoding will be a problem, but I had best just check.

We are still on target at the moment to get a release of WebPA for the end of May, but only if I stop adding things to look at myself. If anything changes or I don’t think we will make it, then we will just have to take stock and reassess what we can do in the time. If you are holding out for a copy of WebPA, please just bear with me, it is on its way. But do be aware that it will not be all singing, all dancing from the 1st cut.

All this to do and two open source books to read!

* Producing Open Source Software - How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel
* Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software - Edited by Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam and Karim R. Lakhani

JISC Conference 2007

2007-03-14T09:26:00.000Z

Yesterday was the JISC Conference for 2007. The only thing I hate about conferences is forgetting to put on really comfortable shoes and the getting up really early to travel when they are so close.

However, I really enjoyed the conference. It was nice to catch up with some people that I know, and find out what they are up to, as well as letting them know what I am doing now.

One of the main highlights was to see Tom Loosemore talk about the direction that the BBC are taking with Web 2.0. It has made me think how Web 2.0 could be integrated into WebPA. The first thing though is to work out what Web 2.0 means in terms of the project. The more I have heard people talk about Web 2.0 over the pass couple of years the number of diverse interpretations of what it mean is increasing. As far as I can work out for the project Web 2.0 will not be Ajax, or necessarily semantic. When I work it out I will let you know…

Meeting OSS-Watch

2007-03-07T10:25:00.000Z

Yesterday we had a very informative meeting with Ross and Rowen from OSS-Watch. As in a previous post I narrowed all the possible licences down to five. With help from the OSS-Watch team we where able to discount two of the licences immediately. This all relates to the actions of the OAI in streamlining the licences that they approve.

This left the options of three licences. One area I never thought of in relation to the licences was the sustainability of the project. It just never occurred that the licence selected for WebPA now could have such a knock on effect for the future. However Oss-Watch have reassured us that we can change the licence in the future. But as with anything in life there are consequences and further in the future we could end up with a number of WebPA systems around, with different licences attached. In the mean time as a project we will take on board all we have learnt from OSS-Watch and get our CLAs sorted immediately.

The meeting has left me with some immediate tasks that need to be sorted out before we get too far down the line. One of the most important to set up a IPR Registry for the project.

Other interesting elements gleamed from the meeting where DOAP and the Google Summer of Code. DOAP we have sorted, and only took a very small amount of time. For such an easy task I would suggest all open source project get a DOAP file sorted out. The DOAP file will hopefully be used by OSS-Watch and others as the system takes off, helping to make our project and code become more discoverable.

The Google Summer of code is very interesting, but at the moment I feel that we are too young to undertake being a mentor. However, I hope that next year we will be a more developed project and have the ability to mentor a student.
You may have noticed that I have still not said which licence we will be using, but untill it has all been confirmed with the management, my lips are sealed.

Buzz buzz buzz word!

2007-03-01T10:25:00.000Z

Although I don’t think that I will ever document the whole of the current version of the WebPA system I have just about got it all worked out. My next step is to sit down with the original developer Paul and work through what I have and identify where the gaps are. But I need to wait until Paul has returned from the land of Jet Lag. In the mean time there is no rest for the wicked.

Straight on to the next task in the work packages. This one is documenting the Service-orientated Architecture (SOA) approach. But as with may areas of IT I feel that I have just fallen off the cliff again and I need to start to learn everything all over again.

The biggest issues that I have with SOA at the moment is the miss understanding of; what SOA is, how SOA works and how SOA is developed. SOA seems to be suffering from “buzz word ism” and has been picked up as a must have by every level within organisations. It is not just that SOA is a buzz word, but that it encompasses further buzz words such as REST, ESB, SOAP etc. Untangling this mess is giving me brain ache, and working out how this all fits in with the project. What is clear is the usefulness of this interoperable practice. There are also clear services that can be applied straight away to the project, which require no thought at all. The straight out the box service we will use if LDAP. All of the other services will have to be road mapped, and allowed to develop with the project.

Reverse Documentation

2007-02-20T10:23:00.000Z

As part of the task list is to document the software architecture for the current WebPA which is in use here at Loughborough. I do have a month to do this documentation along with all the other tasks that have to be completed.

It has been a while since I have had to document any software architecture, so getting my brain into shape is interesting. I keep raking up information I forgot I knew when I learnt UML. But I am also learning more updating my UML skills to encompass UML 2.0. One thing I did forget is how difficult it can be reverse documenting the software architecture, especially when you weren’t there from the beginning.

At the moment I am just about able to document the functional view. This is mainly all of the use case diagrams, but I am sure that there is a mass of information I have left out somewhere. I do think that the worst bit though is trying to get the class diagram done. But what happens when you try to do something like this, the original developer goes on holiday. I think that I will have to leave this for now and come back to it later.

WebPA Project highlighted in DLib

2007-02-08T10:22:00.000Z

The WebPA Project has started to disseminate further afield in 'DLib' magazine. This is an american magazine on digital libraries but just goes to show that the interest in technology enhanced learning and teaching comes from many disciplines and professions.

You will find more information in the news section of the website.

Enterprise SIG

2007-02-07T10:22:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to my first JISC cetis Enterprise SIG, which was really interesting. Now I have even more to think about in relation to the project, but I think that I will try and work each bit out as I reach it. I never realised that the area of student data and course information was so complex.

It was also really great to meet Carol and Paolo from the MINTED and XMarks projects. Hopefully we will be able to share both information and experiences as our current projects develop.

Well I wait now for the next meeting so that I can learn even more, and meet more people with who collaboration can be created.

Planning for usability testing

2007-01-31T10:21:00.000Z

I feel like I have been preparing the ground for weeks although it has only been a few days. Currently we are trying to get the usability testing set up to be run over the next few weeks.

So far all the preparation work is complete and documented. We are going to use the academics here at Loughborough, as we get a good distribution over a number of departments. I have managed to narrow down the potential invitees to one per department. The next step is to invite them all and this is when the whole testing becomes real. I will let you know what happens and how many responses we get and how the testing goes. Hopefully I will not have to do all of the testing myself, we will see if I manage to rope anyone else into running a couple of the sessions for me.

UPDATE:The first three participants for the usability testing have fed back some really good information. There are a lot of commonalities to the information being gathered but also some quite dramatic differences in how they use the system. Lots of the ideas that have been generated will hopefully be able to feed in to the next versions of the WebPA tool. I hope we can remain on track to have the report ready by the end of April beginning of June.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The usability testing is finally getting underway. All of the bureaucratic necessities are out of the way, the academics contacted and the participants flooding in… well three at the moment, but we are half way there.

Open Source Licensing and other perplexing issues

2007-01-22T10:20:00.000Z

We have started to look at all the licensing and Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues that surround the project. This is all leading up to the writing of the consortium agreement and the future open source release of WebPA.

I never imagined that choosing the potential licence that we would use could be so difficult. Deciding on one licence from over 50 different availabe types is so difficult. So far we have narrowed the choice down to five, which we will ultimately pick from after checking with the consortium and receiving legal advice. This is really a legal mine field for us, selecting the wrong one will have an effect on the project and the WebPA system for the rest of its life.

But there are other issues as well. We have to make sure that we have any potential third party agreements drawn up and ensure that they are in line with the consortium agreement. This is not the end, the list of potential agreements and licences goes on. Trying to anticipate what we might do with WebPA now, and in the foreseeable future is mind blowing. We are going to end up with a mass of agreements covering all possibilities, and whether they all get used or not is a completely separate issue again.

As of yet we still have not decided on how we are going to deal with all the WebPA users who will become part of the group that research is carried out on. All bets are off as I foresee having to write agreements with them on what data will be collected and how it will all be handled. At the moment I can see no end of licences and agreements blossoming out of the project, but as they say it is better to be safe than sorry, so we may as well be well informed from the beginning, and not get bitten further into the project.

First blog of the series

2007-01-17T10:18:00.000Z

Well this is my third week on the project, but as I started the last week in December it actually only feels like I have been on the project two weeks. Especially with the break for Christmas.

So far we seem to be moving at a reasonable pace having planned and mapped how the usability and accessibility testing will be carried out. It is hoped that we will get this under way before this month closes.

We have also managed to get some very basic presentations together as an introduction to the project. These are now available on this website if you look under; Project Resources > Presentations. Hopefully we will also be providing a more in-depth PDF that people can download and read in their own time.

Our other major mile stone is getting a JISCmail list. Feel free to sign up to the list so that you can stay-in-touch with the project, but not necessarily get involved. Details on where the list can be found are; About Us > Mailing List. Also don’t for get to check back here every now and again, as I will be putting the progress that we are making available here.

Accessibility Testing

2007-01-13T10:22:00.000Z

I have finished the first lot of accessibility testing today. I had expected to find a large number of issues raise their head and cause lots of the development time to be eaten up, fixing and solving these issues. However, there are very few issues, all of which are really easy to fix, and are related to WCAG 1.0 Level Double A and Triple A rather than the Level A we set out to meet. This does mean that we now have to aim for the next WebPA system to be compliant with WCAG 1.0 Level Double A.

I also looked at how the pages tested against the WCAG 2.0 Draft Guidelines, even after reading Joe Clarke’s attack on the draft. I am amazed that some of the pages that only validate to Level A for WCAG 1.0 will validate to Level 3 for WCAG 2.0, yet others will not validate at all. This may be down to the interpretation of the automated checking tool I used, and my misunderstanding. So for now I think that we will just stick to WCAG 1.0 Level A, while hoping to reach better validation in the future, while keeping one eye on what is happening in the world of WCAG 2.0 (just in case it becomes real!)