[INFO 344 - iSchool] Web Tools and Development: Ideas for campus
I recently had the privilege of teaching a class on web services for INFO 344 Winter QTR. I had a blast and I hope the students had fun too. Web services is something I am intimately engaged with here at the UW so I thought it was an appropriate subject for me to lecture on.
During my lecture I had the students participate in an activity that allowed them to share their ideas on how new web services on campus would benefit our university. The class was split into 5 teams and I have listed each team’s idea below (close to verbatim). The ideas were quite creative and my hope is that some of you who own some of these system will find these posts interesting and insightful. You can aggregate the thoughts of these posts to glean the general theme of what our students (40 of them) in INFO 344 would like to see.
Catalyst Doc Share
Use Case:
Students collaborating on essay
Client App:
Browser UI with basic word processing capabilities integrated with Microsoft Office and Open Office software. A required browser plug in would have to be installed to update the documents using client software. The plug in allows the office clients to update a doc (creating incremental versions) every 15-30 seconds. (Word processing “chat” program)
Web Service:
Keeps track of document versions both from browsers and client apps (MS Office and Open Office). Incremental versioning
Later expansion to Excel and Powerpoint docs
Class Registration visual schedule
Use Case:
Class registration visual schedule creation,integration & filtering based on time and requirements. The current way of manually entering in and adjusting schedules on a calendar is time intensive and prone to mistakes.
Client App:
Drag and drop course information to visual calendar using same browser window
Web Service:
Course catalog and schedule finder/search
FTP Backup App
Use Case:
Allow students to easily backup their files from their desktop to students.washington.edu
Client App:
Auto-save mechanism which prompts users to save files during desktop log off. Can be saved to students.washington.edu or deskmail based on user choice. This can be done thru FTP or SMTP transfer.
Web Service:
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel” using UW resources for this
Student registration and course planning
Use Case:
Student uses registration system and does course planning
Client App:
New schedule finder that combines maps, visual schedule, and route finder. The registration system will have a brand new UI. Plug in to allow for up to 5 SLNs which does:
1. Based on interested courses the system does a comparison of schedule time slots - looks for free/busy times
2. Output of possible schedules (best bets)
3. Sorted by options: distance, compact (Shortest) time schedule
Display visual schedule and improved maps
Web Services:
Google Maps API
For the other web services, UW already has most systems in place already for this to happen
Improved class calendar
Use Case:
Allow students within MyUW to easily see their class schedules that is enhanced so they can see all upcoming assignments, labs, tasks, in one place.
Client App:
Within MyUW pull up my schedule in a way to easily see what I need to do next for my class based on my syllabus. In a way similar to project management tools.
Web Service: Course catalog and course assignments service
Tags: students, web services
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Just a comment for: Student registration and course planning.
Google Maps probably wouldn’t be necessary unless the entire UW mapping system was overhauled to utilize their API. The features outlined above are still desired, however the most important feature we wanted to emphasize isn’t clearly defined. During course registration we want to be able to see the “Visual Schedule” without having to actually register for classes. I do not know how the current Visual Schedule app works but it seems it would be easy enough to utilize it alongside the Schedule Finder.
Future Scenario:
I type in my Curriculum Abbreviations and Course Numbers to the Schedule Finder, hit “Find Schedule”. It comes back with possible schedules but alongside the “Register for this Schedule” button appears a “Display Visual Schedule” link and “Display Map of Classes” link.
Current Problems:
The current scheduling issue is that many students have to grab pen and paper to map out what their possible schedule will look like, or they start analyzing the class times amongst the 3 or 4 possible schedule findings and store them in a matrix in there head, doing comparisons the whole time. During registration weeks these methods (along with others people most likely have) are time consuming and very stressful. Currently to ease that burden some students just register for the classes, hit the “Display Visual Schedule” link and then decide they would rather not take that whole schedule and begin to swap out courses. This leads to unnecessary registration traffic and interferes with those students who are determined to take a specific course, but can’t get in because hundreds of other students are tweaking their schedules to find something “appealing”.
Current/Future Visual Schedule/Map Benefits:
We determined that Visual Schedules have a few benefits that serve students in general, but also the distinct groups of: under and upper classmen (Fresh/Sop and Jr/Sr) (Also, ignoring graduates/phd’s because none of us have experience with their registration process, plus the bulk of the student body is undergraduates). We recognized that the needs of these two groups of students can differ when it comes to registration. The first group is typically concerned with getting General Education requirements out of the way and thus have a very broad selection of courses from which to choose. This also means classes will be geographically dispersed for many students, which is an important factor that should be considered. Incorporating the UW Map feature with Visual Schedule in a different way then the current method can ease the uncomfortable “lost” feeling many new students experience with such a large campus. The second group is typically in their Major and has a narrow set of courses available to them and such courses are often geographically close together. These students are more concerned with the spread of coursework/lecture time over the week and just overall time allocation. The Visual Schedule/Map feature aids the student body with these factors during registration.
This feature immediately allows one to determine what periods of the day throughout the week will be allocated to lectures and what time is free for study/work/play/vegetating. Some students prefer to take courses spread throughout the day, and others prefer a compact block of lectures. Some prefer classes every day of the week, and others prefer having off days from classes. When the textual time data is mapped to a visual representation, students can instantaneously interpret their time allocation by absorbing the whole versus having to linearly progress through the text data that is in current use. Overall students are capable of abstracting much more data from a visual representation. Such as understanding whether they will have time to go get lunch, or should bring a snack along. Whether they will need to hustle from one class location to the next or move at a leisurely pace. Would it even be feasible to have class 1 at location a if class 2 is at location b? Do I have time to get to work in the morning/afternoon/evening? On what days of the week? Coordinating ones schedule becomes so much more simplified and less stressful with a quick visual representation.
Related Useful Features:
As partially outlined beforehand by Tony there would be some useful features to an improved registration system.
•Allow the entry of many SLN’s and have the system find possible schedules from this pool of SLN’s. Perhaps, limiting the search by separating classes into categories such as VLPA, I&S, NW, QSR, then having students weight the search by priority or credit type.
•Display multiple visual schedules side by side and have the option of “Register for this schedule” above each.
•Sort schedule results by compact time schedule, or distance needed to walk.
•Map of Visual Schedule displaying ALL class locations with color coding and simplified text data repeated at side as a legend. (Currently the maps seem to only circle 1 location, but I’ve heard maybe not, the ambiguity is a problem in and of itself. If its not easy to use, it needs to be rethought.)
Summary:
The integration of current UW technologies that are geared towards course registration and planning is the driving motivation of our design concepts. The current tools seem to be segmented and only related in concept versus actual functionality. That is to say the data set with which a student is working is currently manipulated through traversing a cumbersome path instead of finding everything interlinked and accessible from one consolidated location. It would be interesting to see some statistics on how often Visual Schedule is used for course planning purposes. If our INFO344 class is characteristic of UW students then it is a highly used feature and should be utilized to its fullest extent.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Loved these ideas and excited to watch the conversation unfold from here. Are you planning on building these?
If your class needs / would like a live case study to chew on, we’re releasing a new FB app right now for colleges. It’s “orientation on facebook”, pulls your interests from FB profile, you select, add additional tags, and then it recommends student groups to join.
Very simple to start. We are working up towards aggregation and class recommendation, similar to some of your discussions. http://www.redroverhq.com
email me at kevin [at] swiftkickonline.com if you are interested in talking more. I’m going to be out there in a few weeks and would be happy to present / discuss our process if you are interested.