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SSP Project Summary
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Student Tracking: Mother, Mentor, Mate
Student
Katarzyna Zajac, University of Mining and Metallurgy (Krakow)
Supervisors
Mario Antonioletti, EPCC
Gordon Darling, EPCC
Charles Duncan, Department of Meteorology
Martin Morrey, Department of Meteorology
EPCC-TEC has had a long-standing interest in interactive distance learning
and aims to expand in this area in the future. Already a suite of elements
are available through our web site:
- Course notes for most of the EPCC run courses downloadable
in a variety of different formats (HTML, postscript, pdf) [1].
- MPI on Line coupling real audio, HTML slides and GIF animations
in effect making the MPI course presentations available at a
distance [2].
- EPIC allowing on-line exercises to be automated via a browser
[3].
- A set of applets illustrating concepts in MPI [4] on which we aim
to expand.
We would like to be able to expand on this by exploring the area of
student tracking. This would allow us to monitor:
- who is using our courses, from where, at what time
- the browsers they are using
- the coverage of the course material
The development of an appropriate tracking tool would enable the creation
of student profile records that can be examined and utilised to best
cater for students' learning needs and interests. Specifically, it would
provide a feedback mechanism to appropriately focus, modify and target our
courses, enriching the online, interactive learning environment. The
Department of Meteorology at the University of Edinburgh has already
established some of the underlying principles through the EuroMet project
[5] and has a continuing interest in student tracking. Their expertise and
involvement in this collabration will significantly add to the validity
and appropriateness of the approaches adopted.
Using the access log generated by the local web server can
only give a partial picture as to how the learning-material is being
accessed (page caching issues, see [6] for a discussion of this).
Recorded data is also difficult to analyse when a course is distributed
across multiple servers. Therefore an alternative solution will be
developed.
During the project the following items will come under investigation:
- Review of tracking systems
- Examine existing ways of performing student tracking.
e.g. WebCT already has some student tracking, as does the
Euromet project
- examine technical issues of tracking
such as client side vs server side mechanisms.
- Consult potential users on what information is important
and the granularity at which it should be recorded
- Investigate any proposed standards for storing
student-tracking data
- Design and implementation of a generic system to record tracking data
- that satisfies the needs of the potential users
- with a method for including the tracking system in existing
courses
- which is independent of client and server platform
- which is designed for easy extraction of data, whilst minimising
storage requirements
- Analysis of tracking data
- Design an extendable database of student information
portable to any RDBMS(?)-compatible database
including allowance for :
- multiple groups of students
- multiple courses, course modules....
- multiple years/semesters
- Choose a database engine and associated interfaces
(MySQL or some other free derivative might be suitable)
- Generate a tool that will be able to parse the tracking log
and extract data in formats required by the database.
- Generate a tool to be able to query this through the web
and present information in a meaningful (graphical ?) way
(Possible technologies include Java or PERL database
interfaces, PHP)
- Enable analysis of the data in several "views" including :
- profile of the student (with regards to the
pages he/she visits and allowing any area of (self)
assessment to be tracked too).
- similar averaged profiles of groups of students
- statistical profile pf student performance on
selected elements of courses
- Access to tracking information
- Address privacy issues. For example : which portions of
the database should be private and others public ?
- Add an interface for students to query the database and
inspect areas of it.
- The public information should be made
available to all the other students so common areas of
interest can be identified.
- There should be a student
private area where the student can view sensitive
information (like results of class tests which he/she
may not want to share with other students).
- Part of the student profile would not be accessible
to the student and would be used by the tutors to
register other sensitive/administrative information.
- Add a tutor interface to the database that would allow
the tutor to view the private information of the
students he/she is responsible for but not the private
information of the other students.
- It may also be interesting/necessary to add a global data
access mode that might be available to a course organiser.
- Convergence with other sources of student / course information
- Include interface to allow the student to register
his/her own study interests.
- Design database and interfaces so results from exams and
tests could be added.
- An audit trail of student-tutor interactions
could also be recorded in the database, and linked to
information from the tracking analysis.
This is somewhat ambitious but it should be achievable with the provision of
a good design to the student.
[1] See: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/epcc-tec/documents/coursemat.html
[2] See: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/epcc-tec/MPIonLine/
[3] See: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/epic/
[4] See: 1998/ProjectSummary/doel.html
[5] See: http://www.euromet.met.ed.ac.uk/
[6] See: http://www.met.ed.ac.uk/~cnd/papers/tracking.pdf
The final report for this project is available here.
Webpage maintained by
mario@epcc.ed.ac.uk