eLumen Community Forum

Phorum Template (no replies)

atf — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:44:12 -0700

I simply love your phorum template. It's great. I wonder, could you share it? i would like to use it on my forums while giving you credit.

Shared Assessment Packages (no replies)

ersinghaus — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:02:36 -0700

I have a question about shared assessment packages. Note hat these are one of the powerful features in eLumen.

When a shared assessment package is created in eLumen, the user first creates the package then creates an instance of that package. For example: First Year Programming Portfolio is the package. The Programming Portfolio is linked to terms and courses. Once this is done, one creates an instance of this package where the instance is then linked to abilities or achievements in the elumen system and can then be attached to the course or courses.

But I'm wondering why the instance of the package would or should be cloned?

Working Backwards... (no replies)

anthrodocz — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:40:57 -0700

One key insight that seems to stand out in developing intended abilities and standards for their assessment, is that we need in some ways to do this backwards. That is, we need as institutions to work backwards from
*defining main institutional outcomes or abilities
*to defining program abilities/outcomes
*to defining discipline abilities/outcomes
*and finally to defining course abilities/outcomes

The abilities/outcomes we then assess in a given assignment ought to be
1)clear and
2)usually linked to intended course--discipline--program--institutional abilities/outcomes

This seems to make much sense, but I have met with some resistance at time in proposing this perspective...

Graphical Representation of Data (1 reply)

anthrodocz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:35:11 -0700

This might go under "Mashups," but also under "Requested Features"... and yet I am putting it here first under "3rd Party Tools."

I just checked out the "curriculum map" feature of eLumen, and it returned some interesting results, mostly about counts of assessments. This reminded me of the number of times I have thought about what any of our data could look like, were some creative, graphically-oriented db person to put their mind to it. Imagine, for example, our 'intended outcomes' or 'intended abilities' being mapped to a graphical layout like that used by Steihl and Lewchuk's mapping approaches:

This is just one sample, but imagine the possibilities of how both quantitative and qualitative data might be very effectively presented in unexpected ways:

And then there is the mashup potential....
The following is a clickable link --->
We Feel Fine: A Mashup of Emotions on the Web!

Just thinking--- 'graphical representation of eLumen-generated evidence'

'Down for maintenance' switch (2 replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:59:43 -0700

I'd love to have a 'Down for maintenance' switch and custom message field that would show up instead of the login screen when activated. The Administrator role and TECH SUPPORT would probably have permission to the switch.

Now that I think of it, it would also be helpful to have a back door login URL for admins to continue to use the system while it is down.

[SOLVED] Duplicate output in report security > users with users who were manually entered (3 replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:32:41 -0800

Steve Ersinghaus reported a bug in eL 3.0 which was that he was seeing his user record many times when he searched for his name in Security > Users. We think that this bug is MINOR because it only seems to be a reporting issue. That is, it does not affect usage of eLumen other than that it looks funny.

I investigated further, and this issue only appears to happen to users who have been manually input. So imported user data is not affected. It also does not appear to affect eL 2.7. Attached are a couple of screen shots I took of the issue.

Chris Langevin of the eL Collaborative is already on the case and is working with me to reproduce the issue on their servers. If the bug turns out to be legitimate, Chris tells me that the issue will be resolved in eL 3.1

[SOLVED] 'remember my user id' does not remember e-mail-style usernames (5 replies)

jrevillini — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:54:46 -0800

At Tunxis, our usernames look like e-mail addresses. For example, my username is ########@txcc.commnet.edu (where each # character is a number). In eL3, if I select 'remember my username', when I return to the login page, it only remembers the part up to the '@' symbol.

I'll submit this to the eLumen Collaborative.

[TIP] Subscribe to be notified of new posts! (no replies)

jrevillini — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:54:04 -0800

Hey Gang,
I've just entered the 21st century by learning how to use RSS Feeds so I thought I'd share how to subscribe to this forum's RSS feeds so you can be notified when new posts come in, even if you aren't subscribed to the post itself (because you can do that when you write a post as well).

So if you want to subscribe to the entire forum, you would click on the feed icon that should appear in your location bar (see the diagram I've attached) and then select either 'Subscribe to RSS (topics)' or 'Subscribe to RSS (topics +replies).' That will bring you to the feed page. Now you can grab that URL and paste it into your feed reader. I'm trying out Google Reader right now because I already use gmail, so my existing account just works for that. If anyone else has other readers to recommend, I'm all ears.

If you're still not sure about how to access the feeds, here they are for your convenience:
eLumen Community Forum RSS Feed (topics only) <- this will alert you when a new topic is started
eLumen Community Forum RSS Feed (topics + replies) <- this will alert you when a new topic is started or when someone replies.

upgrading to eLumen 3 is EASY (no replies)

jrevillini — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:48:41 -0800

One thing that eLumen is always pretty great about is upgrades. They come out regularly and they pretty much just work. Following the installation guide that you can get from Chris Langevin, it's a really simple process.

In a nutshell, this time you're going to be making sure you have the Java 5 JRE installed - I used Java 6 but it's not necessarily supported. Then you're going to upgrade Tomcat to 6.x. There's a database upgrade script which just works out of the box. Then you'll deploy the new elumen.war file and hey, presto, you're done. It took about 35 minutes on my development box. I'll be doing the live server this Friday.

One note - you have to uninstall Tomcat 5 before installing 6, otherwise it can't install itself as a service. The eLumen documentation on how to do the upgrade was great. Good work, eLumen Collaborative!

Banner SQL for eLumen, compliments of Karen @ IPFW (4 replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:52:39 -0700

Let me just say: this is huge. Karen Geary of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) has sent me the SQL code which they use to generate the necessary data to import into eLumen. The way I understand it (BANNER experts could explain this better), they:

1. Use the attached SQL queries to generate views against BANNER.
2. The views are then exported to XML document fragments.
(NOTE: if eLumen Collaborative handles your imports, you're done. Send them the XML and you can skip the rest)
3. The XML fragments are combined and validated against the eLumen XSD (contact Sebastian or your support person for the latest)
4. The final XML document is imported into eLumen, probably using their latest (and greatest!) web-based import utility.

Please post your thanks to Karen for sharing these files. Everyone needs them if they have the ability to execute SQL against BANNER. I unfortunately, do not have that luxury [yet], so I use a different method.

THANKS, KAREN!

Practical Application: Case Shakespeare (no replies)

ersinghaus — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:02:11 -0800

Just completed an evaluation of student work on what I'm calling Analysis 1, which attempts to get students engaged in close reading of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Here's the assessment:

Quote:
Analysis 1 for Shakespeare asks you to come at Macbeth with a practical and critical eye. In this written assessment, you should examine a particularly suggestive section (a soliloquy would work just fine, if it is substantive enough for analysis), a scene, an area that moves the plot, and discuss its significance to the play's overall conflict as you determine it. You should use terminology relevant to the study of a literary or dramatic work to give your analysis relevance and context. Think about it: we've talked about significant ideas and we've talked about particular elements of poetry and drama, such as imagery, metaphor, and alliteration, and these items work really well when you are identifying important quotes or aspects of the work for use in analysis. Sound patterns may provide clues to ideas Shakespeare may be emphasizing.
Consider how you should go about this, though. What sort of work is Macbeth? Even though this may be obvious, you should consider how the type of work shapes your decisions. Do elements of poetry and drama assist you in understanding the significance of your chosen passage to Macbeth as a whole?

Note the Critical Thinking elements of this assignment requires you to support your conclusions with “adequate and persuasive” evidence. How will quoting from the play serve this purpose in the context of the assignment?

Additionally, the assessment comes with a forecast of the abilities against which I'll be evaluating student work:

Quote:
Assessed Course Ability
5. Literary Analysis: the ability to synthesize acts of analysis in the preceding abilities and communicating that analysis – primarily via the essay but can also be through oral presentations, performances, or other media.

5.1 Level 1: Critically reflects on their reading of Shakespeare's works.
5.2 Level 1: Evaluates the significance of specific literary passages to the works of Shakespeare using appropriate terminology.

Assessed General Education Abilities

1. Communication
The ability to effectively articulate and communicate thoughts and ideas through writing and speech, and the ability to listen meaningfully and effectively.
1. Level 2: communicates with sophistication and complexity in the context of an academic discipline

2. Critical Thinking
The process of evaluating information and concepts, identifying and analyzing relationships, and drawing and justifying reasonable inferences and conclusions in order to gain knowledge and insight, solve problems, and make decisions.

2.3. Draws inferences and conclusions that are logical and supported by evidence

2.3.3. Level 3: supports conclusions with adequate and persuasive evidence

The assessment closes with the "standards of evaluation," where I pitch to the student their progress thus far in the course relevant to "general achievements":

I think it's important that the "assignment" portion of the assessment hint at the Literary and General Education Abilities so that student study practice matches the goals of the disciple and the abstracted gen ed abilities. Matephorcially, this is like Track and Field. In Track and Field most athletes Run, so running is the General Ability, as illustrated in the first gen ed in my rubric: communicates with sophistication and complexity in the context of an academic discipline. The Literary Studies Abilities describe the manifestation of "academic discipline." The gen ed is written abstractly so that any discipline can define what "sophistication and complexity in the context of an academic discipline" means.

The student submits all of this to me once their work is complete, at least by deadline, so that I can put the assessment into practice, returning the paper and the scoring sheet back to them so that they can improve their lapses. The critical issue here, at least in terms of eLumen, is that the rubrics are prepared and available in the system and once assessment is complete, the finished scores can be entered.

More on this soon.

hi, I'm Jim, and I use eLumen (2 replies)

jrevillini — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:51:31 -0700

Hi everyone,
If anyone has eLumen setup problems, I've probably had it before too. I have a development eLumen box which I use to test things before progating the changes to our production server at Tunxis. In messing around with eLumen quite a bit on my own, I've had my share of problems, and I have always found a solution, sometimes with Sebastian Ortiz's help.

Anyway, post your problem. If I haven't had it before, we can try to replicate it on my test box.

Help the forum grow (no replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:27:09 -0800

If you'd like to help the forum grow, I wouldn't mind if those of you with blogs mentioned use with a link, like so:

eLumen Community Forum

How does that help? Well, first, your readership may be inclined to get in on this, especially if they are in higher education or somehow affected by eLumen. Second, the more backlinks that we get, the better this site will do in search results, the more people looking for eLumen help will find us.

Thanks for your support!

Amazing collection of assessment and learning outcomes links @ St. John's (no replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:55:43 -0800

St. John's University put together a massive collection of resources related to student learning assessment and outcomes. Here it is (get out your magnifying glass): http://www.stjohns.edu/about/ir/tools/resources.stj

I have no idea if it's of any use, but it sure looks impressive.

Assessment Issues: Case Study (1 reply)

ersinghaus — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:51:13 -0800

Last week (well when doesn't really matter) I heard a report on NPR about Coke's purchase of Honest Tea. In the car it suddenly hit me: I'll have my lit students write an essay on the relationships between Honest Tea and the Romantic poets we happened to be reading at the time.

In class, I brought up the honest tea homepage and we went through the mission of the company and studied some of its products. Here we concentrated on the company's appeals to the audience and even the design of its bottles in relation to the mission. Then I gave students some time to draft out a written analysis that identified and defined certain Romantic notions and then related Honest Tea to Blake, Wordsworth, and Barbauld, even Robinson. If Honest Tea, for example, is interested in presenting its customers with an alternative beverage, what is the social and cultural context, and how do these issues square with Wordsworth's "simple child" in "We are Seven." How does Blake's "anti-institutionalism" conform to Honest Tea's "alternative" consumption model?

Barbauld clearly faces the sun of reason and logic against the moon's Contemplation, who lives in space unintruded upon (at least till the end of the poem, "A Summer Evening . . .") by the light of logic. Honest Tea makes appeals in this regard, in this space.

The assessment feature is pretty clear. Can the student identify the appropriate language and relations? Can the student define the terms? Can the student balance the examples such that a clear illustration of HT's position is drafted and then compared with a poet's specific articulation of the very same notion?

Abilities Surfer (no replies)

jrevillini — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:40:50 -0800

I developed a php application (tentatively named 'Abilities Surfer') built on CakePHP which is sort of a mashup between catalog data and eLumen abilities/achievements. I say 'sort of' because I cheated - I pulled a snapshot down of all the abilities in eLumen and imported them into my MySQL catalog database. The project goal was to provide an online application to easily get a summary of:

* which abilities are being assessed within a program
* which abilities are not being assessed within a program
* which abilities are being assessed within a course, but within the context of the program (i.e. grouped first by program, then sorted alpha by course name, then by ability number.)

eLumen provides these views, but they are geared for someone who is working with the data. But what if you just want to see the data? In this case, the data isn't confidential - it should be public.

This first version is just a prototype - a proof of concept. Future versions will be true mashups which read from the live eLumen database and couple the data with catalog data from our MySQL server.

[TIP] Headings are links (no replies)

jrevillini — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:50:45 -0800

If you want the link to this site or to the current board or topic, you can always right click the black header at the top of the page and copy the URL to an e-mail, blog, or chat. I just added that feature to the forum because when I was blogging and I wanted to link to a particular board, I noticed that other than the breadcrumbs, which aren't always obvious, there was no easily copyable link to the current page. The URL in the address bar sometimes contains extraneous stuff which only has to do with your session, so that isn't always the best solution.

eLumen Fridays (no replies)

ersinghaus — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:55:26 -0800

I stole the concept or sound of eLumen Fridays from Eastgate Systems' Tinderbox Weekends.

But, anyway, the plan for eLumen Fridays is to provide weekly opportunity for anyone to come in and talk to me about using eLumen for teaching and learning, which is really what the system is all about. I don't see eLumen as simply software for storing data or for crunching numbers but really as a piece of software that can help people organize their thinking around teaching and learning practice.

For example, since Tunxis has begun a levels of mastery program for gen ed and some of our programs, the notion of an honor's program has really begun to crystallize. Let's say you have 4 levels of mastery within an Area of Learning called Problem Solving. So, you move from a foundation level to an advanced level inside Problem Solving. The 4 Level, or advanced, can be reserved for honors students and courses without having to create complex structures. In eLumen, you simply link the 4th mastery level in the form of an achievement or ability to a course and then link that ability to assignments built for that course, say Honors Algebra or Honors American Literature. Non-honors students are simply not responsible for the advanced requirement, but honors students will be. It's very simple.

eLumen Fridays can help spread these kinds of ideas. But they're also good for anyone who just wants to set up an assignment in the system. I reserve 3 slots on Friday mornings, each thirty minutes in length.

e-Portfolio (8 replies)

ersinghaus — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:54:10 -0700

One of the potential mashes here would a portfolio system so that specific assessment information, such a score on a rubric, could link to a specimen of student work.

We had initiated contact between eLumen and the e-portfolio managers in the CT system. This might be good place to figure out where that project went or its status.

It's Valentine's Day - Have you hugged your server? (no replies)

jrevillini — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:34:55 -0800

On Valentine's Day, everyone gets so hung up on their significant other than often times servers will get neglected - especially eLumen servers. This Valentine's Day, show the love! Here are a few idea that can spice things up for you and your eLumen server:

* check your backups and make sure they're still running regularly (you DO backup the server, right?!)
* download the latest eLumen and make plans for an upgrade
* download the latest eLumen Import Tools(contact sebastian for username and password) and learn more about your partner's import process

Have a good one!

Archiving Tool (4 replies)

ersinghaus — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:19:59 -0800

I'd like to see an interesting archiving tool. This suggestion will come from a question of iterative process. Much information that goes into eLumen is continually shifting and changing. This is the way abilities or achievements are written. They are written to change and if changes occur other processes at institutions must follow suit, such as changes to syllabi and program language.

eLumen provides for a snapshot of an institution's assessment identity. What if that assessment identity changes. This could be as trivial as a department changing it's name or revising it's core program achievements or abilities.

[TIP] tagging the post subject in the forum (no replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:36:31 -0800

When people are searching the forum for answers, it's helpful to have the post subjects tagged (prepended with) with a word which classifies the thread. For example, if you are reporting a bug/defect with the software, prepend your subject with '[BUG]'. That way if someone searches for BUG, they can get a quick list of all bugs reported in this forum.

Here are a few other ones you can use. Feel free to invent new ones. If other people like the idea, it will probably catch on. NOTE: you can retroactively tag a post by simply editing it and modifying the subject line.

[BUG] - denotes a thread which contains a bug report or discussion on a bug.
[SOLVED] - denotes a thread in which a question was asked, and a reply had the information you needed to solve the problem.
[TIP] - denotes that you're posting a tip which could be of interest to other group members

If you have any other tagging suggestions, let's hear them.

creating a development elumen server (no replies)

jrevillini — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:56:02 -0800

I'm a firm believer in setting up a 'test server' or development server to test out all import transactions and non-standard practices before we start to do so on the production site. So far, in my experience with eLumen, something has always seemed to go ... well, not necessarily wrong ... but sometimes we had unexpected results, and it took some time of playing with the system to figure things out. One example was section numbers. Each course offering in eLumen can have a section number. In BANNER, the section numbers are a sequence starting with '01'. But it turned out that instructors knew what CRN they were teaching, rather than which section, so putting the CRN data into the section field before we did the import turned out to be the best way to go. But I digress.

Blue fin tech. has been kind enough to let us install eLumen on my development box (self-supported, of course), and I'm using SQL Server 2005 Express (the free one) for the database. Tomcat, of course, was free. I have written a how-to guide on setting up a development box from scratch, but I haven't gotten the new wiki up yet. I should have that done in a week or two.

So last night I set about importing Spring 2008 enrollment data on the dev box. The old import process (the one where you hit a URL like http:// servername:8080/elumen/jsp/processImportsOnce.jsp) wasn't doing anything. I called Sebastian, and he walked me through setting up the new import process which sounded really great (it has some new conflict resolution features which help keep the data sanitized). However, as we were going through it, things were going wrong. The SQL code I needed to run against the database failed at first, and I had to do some manual entries, then the import process failed...

... long story short: all the problems turned out to be because of the method I had used to create a copy of my production database on the development server. I had deleted the 'elumen' database on the development server, then ran an Export Data task from the production server to the development box. WRONG! Doing this copies the tables and data BUT DOES NOT set the primary key columns to IDENTITY, which means you cannot insert new data the way you normally would.

Sebastian recommended a different method of duplicating the database:
1) go to the production box and open sql manager
2) backup the 'elumen' db
3) copy the *.bak file from the backup directory on the live box to the backup directory on the development box
4) delete the elumen database (you may need to DETACH the database first, as SQL Server is too stupid to drop any connections to the DB before deleting it)
5) restore the database on the dev box, using the *.bak file you copied over
6) delete and recreate the 'elumen' user, and assign db_owner privileges.
7) restart tomcat
8) login to elumen and make sure everything works. if you get the 'database temporarily not available' error, just wait about a minute and try again. If it is still not connectable, there is still something wrong with the database on the development box. Make sure it is online, make sure the SQL Server services are running, double check the permissions for the elumen user.

After I did this, I was able to upgrade my development box to use the new eLumen import tool, and everything was totally awesome. Thanks again to Sebastian, who worked tirelessly to make sure I got everything going, and did not get mad that the whole thing was bombing because I had mirrored the database the wrong way. Muchos kudos.

repository of files (2 replies)

jrevillini — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:04:57 -0800

This is not so much a suggestion for the software but for the eLumen development teams. I'd like to see a client login section which has an organized repository of software and files - like a self-service station for eLumen admins. Right now, there seems to be a variety of ways to get the packages, the XSD files, the database upgrade scripts, etc.

I'd love to do a community-run repository, but if we did that I think we'd probably be looking at a lawsuit :). I'll ask though.

Banner 2 eLumen (4 replies)

jrevillini — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:35:23 -0800

I created a tool called Banner 2 eLumen to crunch BANNER extracts F02 and CR into a usable XML file. The program also validates the resulting XML against the XSD of your choice to ensure proper format. I've gotten clearance from our IT director to release the program into the wild under an open source license, I just haven't had time to look into the available licenses and select the best one.

But do drop me a line if you'd like to use this VERY ALPHA software to create your import file for eLumen. It needs a lot of work, but just like bacteria, in the right environment it really gets the job done quickly.

sortable columns (no replies)

jrevillini — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:52:25 -0800

I've said it from day one: we need all the table headings to be clickable so they can be dynamically sorted. Ideally, the sorting would happen in real-time using javascript, rather than hitting the server again.

Things to come (no replies)

jrevillini — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:43:19 -0800

In the future, there will also be a community-driven wiki of documentation for eLumen. Feel free to post tips, tricks, and procedures here in the forum, but know that if you post something especially useful, you may be asked to promote that content to the wiki. The wiki should wind up being quite a nice companion for users, admins, and IT people who are involved with an eLumen project at their school.

Statement of Purpose (4 replies)

jrevillini — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:15:45 -0700

We need to build a strong eLumen support group. Let's face it - there is a LOT to the program and the assessment system it supports. SO please use this forum to ask questions and collaborate on solutions.

While this forum is not affiliated with the eLumen developers or masterminds behind the program, I'm hoping that the parties actively working on eLumen will start hanging out here to help answer questions and find out what topics are hot in the assessment world.

Thanks for joining us and helping to further the progress of eLumen development and implementation.

Peace,
James

[SOLVED] Yes, this forum is UGLY. (1 reply)

jrevillini — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:20:00 -0800

I want everyone to know that I am aware of the fact that this forum is ugly. I'll be working to remedy that situation as time permits. Please do not see the aesthetics as a reflection of the quality of this forum or its importance.

Thanks,
James

p.s. and if anyone wants to lend a hand with running this, please fire me an e-mail.