In-year Assessment – Tools for PTs in Physics and AstronomyKeith BruntonApplication Developer / eLearning Support,School of Physics and Astronomy (SOPA) 28th May 2013
Outine • Context & Background • Overview - Physics and Astronomy solution • Processes & Tools • Questions / Discussion • Technical Detail – if needbe
Context Describe the processes and tools by which the School of Physics and Astronomy provides Personal Tutors (and others) with in-year assessment marks for its students
Background School has substantial in-year formative & summative assessment – mostly offline – on paper School already adds in-year assignment marks to SMART via manual marking/checking/scanning processes Until Semester 1, 2012, marks were not (easily) available to PTs, course staff or students Aspiration to get assignment marks to PTs to detect at-risk tutees earlier have info at hand for tutee meetings Also: School strategy to encourage use of VLE (Learn)
Overview of Physics & Astronomy solution • SMART – not an option for multiple reasons • Learn VLE has good mechanisms for displaying marks to students and course staff (My Grades/Grade Centre) • Learn has SOAP interfaces -> Course, Student and Mark data to external apps – for use by PTs? • School Soln: Use Learn + CourseMarks • External app (CourseMarks) built to give Personal Tutors access to tutee marks across all courses
Challenges • 1. Processes - Get marks from SMART -> Learn = New Processes & commitment of teaching office time • 2. Tools - CourseMarks for Personal Tutors = App Development + access to Learn’s SOAP
1. Processes • Most work done by Physics Teaching Office staff – for each course… • Distribute marks to markers & checkers – receive back • Scan marks into SMART • NEW Export to Smart’s CSV • NEW Use Smart2Learn to create Learn CSV • NEW Upload to Learn Course (GradeCentre via CSV) • Available immediately in Learn to students/ staff • Available to PTs via CourseMarks…
1. Processes – smart2learn • Simple tool to convert nasty SMART’s ‘csv’ to Learn-compatible CSV
2. CourseMarks for Personal Tutors • Developed in-house to display tuteemarks to Personal Tutors • 22 PTs, ~430 students, ~30 active courses in Learn – AY12/13 • Personal Tutors (+ teaching office) access only (EASE). Tutee access soon • PTs can only access ‘visible’ tutee data • PTs see all tutee courses inone place – v. basic UI • Colour coding marks can help identify tutee’s issues • Course Mark Data is currently fetched ‘live’ from Learn via SOAP (*) • …Demo… (1) Learn (2) CourseMarks
SOAP • SOAP = Simple Object Access Protocol • Simple web requests (over https) to Learn but transfers data as XML – instead of HTML • E.gCourseMarks asks “get course marks for student X for course Y” returns <xml><item><column-id><mark></item>… • Learn has comprehensive SOAP APIs • CourseMarks - permission only to READ data from Learn via CourseWS, UserWS, MembershipWS, GradeColumnWS • Learn – requires tool pre-registration, authentication, method-level authorisation (and other) security – Anne-Marie Scott / Jo Kinsley
Summary • School : lots of in-year assessments – already entered in SMART (golden copy) • Delivery through Learn enables access to marks for students, staff • CourseMarks – for PTs – cross-course, early warning system • Implementation – teaching office resource required • Extendable but may not suit other Schools’ processes / approach / VLE
Questions / Discussion
AY13/14 Plans • PTs finding the tool useful - feedback - Judy? • Current development: • Address performance issues – move away from ‘live’ • Provision for multi-year, multi-school support (?) • Student View for tutees • Other changes – summary stats, ‘at-risk’ notifications / indicators • Ready for AY 13/14
CourseMarks - Technical Notes • Written in Ruby/Rails/Apache/MySQL & SQLite3 • Also Savon, SASS, Bourbon, jQuery • Learn ProxyTool (via SOAP/WebServices) allows controlled access to all data – not just Physics • App-level ‘filters’ for PTs show Physics only courses • EASE authentication – app/role authorisation
CourseMarks – Feeds / Data • Read-only feed of data from Learn (SOAP) for Course Info, Memberships, Student, Assessment marks • Tutee to Personal Tutor mapping – one-off manual feed from BOXI – I may change to automatic at some point • Authorisation for CourseMarks managed manually – PT (& teaching office), Senior PT (Judy), admin roles available – could manage via LDAP – but no plans – only 22 PTs
CourseMarks - Issues • ‘Live’ data fetch from Learn too slow – not scalable • SOAP API difficult to verify locally – load balancers on live/test Learn obstruct • ‘Dev’ Learn can be unreliable – rebuilds • SOME data not returned correctly from Learn –e.g calculated column max mark values
Resources, etc • https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/coursemarks (authreqd) • http://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/smart2learn (free to use) • Smart2Learn wiki page • Blackboard Web Services (SOAP) API docs • Local BB Learn Web Services wsdl / XML • Acknowledgements • Anne-Marie Scott & Jo Kinsley – IS Apps
