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).
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
A quick update before a break
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.
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.
Friday, 8 August 2008
Visiting a WebPA adopter
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.
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.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Landing on our feet again...
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;
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.
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.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
IMS Regional Finals for the next IMS Learning Impact Awards
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.
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.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Selecting the right time to release
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.
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.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Gathering survey information online
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.
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.
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