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The Semester Book - A Web Tool for Faculty and Students

Robin Montgomery, Associate Director

Cory Hutchinson, Applications Consultant

Louisiana State University

Abstract

In its efforts to deliver meaningful services and information via the web, Louisiana State University has developed a grade book application offering faculty a suite of tools for administering classes and distributing information to students. The Semester Book is comprised of several key modules:

• Roster

• Syllabi

• Assessment

• Materials

• Discussion

Enrolled students access the Semester Book to obtain the course materials and view their assessment grades and current standing in the class.

Founded in 1853, Louisiana State University (LSU) is the flagship institution of higher education in the State of Louisiana. LSU been designated by the Carnegie Foundation as a Research University I and is one of only 25 universities nationwide holding both land-grant and sea-grant status. Research is supported by a nationally known library and by a supercomputer that places LSU among the top 20 universities in the country in terms of computing capacity. Curricula leading to bachelor�s degrees are offered in 75 major fields, master�s degrees are offered in 77 major fields, and doctoral degrees are offered in 56 major fields. The D.V.M. is offered by the School of Veterinary Medicine and the J.D., L.L.M., and M.C.L. degrees are offered by the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, a unit of the LSU System located on the Baton Rouge campus. The LSU community includes approximately 30,000 students, 1300 full-time faculty members, and 3200 staff members.

In its efforts to deliver meaningful services and information via the web, the Enterprise Solutions Group within the Office of Computing Services at LSU has developed a grade book application offering faculty a suite of tools for administering classes and distributing information to students. The Semester Book application is available through the faculty member�s or student�s personalized web-based desktop. The Semester Book is comprised of several key modules. The Roster module allows for the loading of class rosters, including e-mail addresses, into the faculty member�s Semester Book via a real time transaction accessing mainframe data. The Assessment module allows for the establishment of number and weights of assessments in computing final grades and stores the students' grades on individual exams, quizzes, homework, and projects. The Materials and Syllabi modules provide for the distribution of the syllabus and other materials as documents, file attachments, or URL links. The Discussion module provides for on-line communications between the faculty member and students in all sections of a particular course taught by the faculty member. Other features include a bulletin board for announcements and tools for sending e-mail to an entire class or established groups within a class. Enrolled students access the Semester Book to obtain course materials, view their assessment grades and current standing in the class, or participate in on-line discussions.

The Semester Book:
A Web Tool for Faculty & Students

Introduction and Background

The Administrative Information Systems (AIS) department within the Office of Computing Services (OCS) at LSU was chartered in 1983 to work with the University community to develop, enhance, maintain, and protect the administrative information resources of the University. By the early 1990's, AIS had delivered many mission-critical applications to make the campus more efficient and effective. Administrative applications are currently maintained in the following areas: Institutional Finances, Human Resource Management, Facilities Management, Student Enrollment Management, Student Finance, Student Services, Information Resource Management Services, and General Administrative Support. More than 80 IMS and DB2 mainframe databases and 9,500 programs support these administrative applications. Approximately 120,000 times each business day, users across the LSU campus issue online IMS transactions to view or update data housed in administrative databases.

In 1996, analysts from AIS and other departments within the Office of Computing Services were charged with building enterprise solutions which spanned the academic, research and administrative requirements of the University. To provide greater focus on these technology challenges, the Enterprise Solutions Group (ESG) was formed in 1998. Existing personnel from two departments, including AIS, were moved into the new structure. All application development - from traditional to Web - is now performed by the Enterprise Solutions Group.

Personal Access Web Services (PAWS) was the first enterprise application to be delivered. The goal of the PAWS project was to deliver the University�s product, in the form of educational knowledge and administrative tools and information, to the appropriate members of the University community, in a personal, easy-to-use manner that spans computing platforms, while securing the integrity of that product. With PAWS providing the means for delivery, students, faculty, and staff now have access to a rapidly growing array of applications such as registration, address update, degree audit, and grade posting.

Since June 1998, the Semester Book application has been available to a select group of faculty members through their PAWS desktops. Faculty, for the first time, were provided a suite of tools for computing grades, managing class rosters, and distributing course information via the Internet.

Technical Environment

PAWS and the applications available through it, including the Semester Book, are powered by Lotus Domino. LSU participates in the Lotus Passport Program - Total Campus Option making Domino a cost-effective solution for LSU. Domino provides a Web application development platform as well as an infrastructure for messaging and collaboration, account and profile management, security management, backup, recovery, and redundancy.

MQ-Series, an IBM message-queueing software package, is used to interface the Web applications developed in Lotus Domino with LSU�s IMS transaction systems. The Class Roster module in the Semester Book is an example of this interface. Because existing on-line transactions are issued to access the mainframe data, development time for PAWS applications has been kept to a minimum and programming redundancy has been reduced.

PAWS - The Delivery Tool for Semester Book

PAWS is a personal electronic kiosk available to the students, faculty and staff of LSU via the Internet. It is more than just another web application; it is a portable electronic desktop available from any Netscape 3.0 or equivalent browser. The PAWS desktop can be accessed from any public access personal computer at LSU. In addition, with a direct Internet connection or with an Internet Service Provider, PAWS can be accessed from the dormitory room, office, home or conference Internet workstation.

PAWS represents the convergence of two trends in the delivery of services through information technology. First, PAWS is a customer-centric solution. The PAWS desktop is the individual�s desktop, not the University�s desktop. As such, each PAWS desktop reflects the personality and preferences of the individual who owns it. It is customized to that individual�s tastes and educational needs. PAWS is a "market-facing" solution. It is the primary vehicle by which many University transactions will be carried out.

A sample PAWS desktop is shown in Figure 1. The desktop is implemented using frame technology. The frame on the left is the PAWS navigator. It is the menu bar of PAWS. This frame does not change as the user moves from application to application within PAWS. The frame on the right is the PAWS active window. The initial document displayed in the active window is the PAWS news page, conveying current information to PAWS account holders, including important messages, new PAWS applications, and applications under development that will be coming soon.

Figure 1

What is Semester Book?

The Semester Book application provides faculty with a suite of tools for computing grades, managing class rosters, and distributing information for courses taught in the current semester. This application is divided into several key modules-Roster, Syllabi, Assessment, Materials, and Discussion.

The Roster module allows for the creation of student documents. An electronic document is created for each student enrolled in a selected course via a real time transaction. The Syllabi module provides the instructor with the flexibility of distributing the course syllabus electronically. The Assessment module contains both assessment criteria and assessment results. Assessment criteria are used to establish the grading scale and the number and weight of all assessments for the course. After the creation of an assessment criteria document, the instructor can generate individual assessments. These assessments allow the instructor to input and distribute grades for exams, quizzes, homework, and projects. Students can then view their assessment and overall grades by accessing their individual document. The Materials module (supporting audio, video, and text format), has the same functionality as the Syllabi module, allowing instructors to distribute course materials electronically. The final module, Discussion, facilitates communication between the faculty member and the students.

Semester Book Main Page

Faculty members access their Semester Book through the "Access Faculty Resources" category on their PAWS desktop. When selected, the Semester Book Main Page is displayed. The Main Page, shown in Figure 2, allows faculty to add/remove a person�s access, post an announcement, send an e-mail, publish a course, rebuild courses, and provide feedback.

Figure 2

The instructor can provide access to course materials for individuals other than enrolled students. The individuals are assigned either an instructor or student role. The instructor role, commonly assigned to graduate assistants, provides authority to create, edit, delete, and view course materials. The student role, usually assigned to students interested, but not enrolled, in the course provides only view access. The instructor can also revoke such access at any time.

To distribute information, the instructor can post an announcement or send an e-mail. Each course may have one announcement at any given time. Students must access their Semester Book to read an announcement. The instructor also has the option of creating e-mail groups and assigning students to a group. This feature is particularly helpful when the course requires students to work in groups. E-mail can be sent to a selected group or all students currently enrolled in the course.

Until a course is published, only the instructor can view the course information on the web. Any time during the semester, the instructor can publish his course information to the students. By publishing a course, all students currently enrolled in the selected course who have a PAWS account are given the course link on their PAWS desktop. This link reflects the course department, class number, and section number. For example, a student enrolled in ISDS 1100 section 20 would have a link �SB ISDS 1100 020�. Students have view access only to the course materials, while instructors have full access to create, edit, delete, and view all materials.

A nightly process adds a course link to the desktops of currently enrolled students who have obtained a PAWS account since the course was published. This process also removes the course link from the desktops of students who have dropped a published course.

When a Semester Book database is first built for a faculty member, their courses for the current semester are automatically loaded into the application. If the course load is modified, such as a course being added/dropped, the faculty member must rebuild his courses to reflect this change. By choosing the rebuild option, an on-line transaction is issued and retrieves the instructor’s course load for the current semester from the mainframe.

The feedback option provides instructors and students a means to make suggestions or obtain help from the Office of Computing Services. All documents created using the feedback method are monitored and responded to within twenty-four hours.

Semester Book Roster Module

Using the Roster module, instructors create and maintain class roster information, while students verify their personal information and view assessment and overall grades.

When the instructor submits a request to create the class roster, an on-line transaction is issued to the mainframe and all students registered for the selected course are retrieved. An electronic document is built for each currently enrolled student and contains the student’s name, social security number, classification, and e-mail address. An instructor may edit a student’s document to change the e-mail address, e-mail group, or add comments about the student. Comments entered by the instructor are not available to the student.

The instructor can view the student information by last name, e-mail group, or class standing. The class standing view ranks students based on their overall course grade and displays the students from the highest to lowest numeric grade, as displayed in Figure 3.

Figure 3

The instructor may also extract the class roster or assessment information in a text file format. The class roster option retrieves the students’ name, social security number, e-mail address, and classification. The assessment option captures the students’ name, social security number, and each assessment score. Using either extract option, a text file containing the chosen information is built as an attachment and is accessible via the web. The attachment can then be viewed or downloaded by the instructor. The text file can be imported into a word processor, electronic spreadsheet, or database application for the instructor’s personal use.

When a student accesses the Roster module, only his personal electronic document is displayed. The student uses this document to verify his student information and view his individual assessment grades as well as his overall course grade, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Semester Book Assessment Module

The Semester Book Assessment module has two components, Assessment Criteria and Assessment.

Assessment Criteria

The Assessment Criteria component, shown in Figure 5, allows instructors to specify the course grading requirements. Assessment Criteria is divided into two sections: grading scale and assessment types.

The grading scale section is used to numerically define how the course grade is assigned. For example, a ten point grading scale would have A=90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79, D=60-69, and F=0-59.

Figure 5

The assessment types section is used to specify the components of the course grade. The instructor enters the number of homework, exams, projects, and quizzes given throughout the semester and the weight assigned to each assessment type. The instructor may also specify how many of each assessment type to compute. For example, students may have ten homework assignments throughout the semester, but only the highest eight are used in determining the course grade.

Both sections are needed to calculate students’ overall numeric and letter grades in the course.

Assessment

The Assessment component is used to enter students’ numeric grades on an individual assessment. Although a student cannot view assessment documents, he can view his assessment score by accessing his student document in the Roster module.

The instructor can choose to enter grades by either a manual input or file import option. Under the manual input option, see Figure 6, an electronic assessment document containing each student’s name and social security number is displayed on the web. The instructor then enters a numeric grade, based on 100 points, for each student. The import option allows the instructor to attach a text file containing students’ social security numbers and grades in a predefined fixed format.

Once the grades are submitted using either option, the students’ electronic documents are updated with the assessment grades, overall course grades are recalculated, and an assessment performance document is created.

Student documents are updated to display each assessment score. For example, a student who made an 88 on exam one, would see ‘Exam 1 88’ on his student document.

Figure 6

Each student’s overall course grade is recalculated after the submission of grades for each assessment. Based on the assessment scores and the grading scale for the course, the student’s overall course numeric and letter grades are calculated and displayed on the student document.

An assessment performance document, shown in Figure 7, is also created for each new assessment. This document displays the number of students who took the assessment, the number and percent of students receiving each letter grade, and the high, low, and average grade. Assessment performance is the only document that students can view within the Assessment component of the Semester Book.

Figure 7

At any time, the instructor can create an overall course performance document. This document resembles the assessment performance document, except the information displayed represents the performance based on students’ overall course grades rather than individual assessment.

Semester Book Syllabi and Materials Modules

The Syllabi and Materials modules of the Semester Book allow the instructor to electronically post all course materials on the web without having to know HTML. This saves the instructor time and resources by not having to duplicate and distribute paper copies of materials. It also gives the students the flexibility of always having access to the course materials from any Internet enabled computer.

A syllabus or material, which can be shared by multiple courses within a Semester Book, are created in one of three ways: input, URL, or attachment.

The input option creates a free form text field, which allows the instructor to type or cut and paste information from an existing document.

If the course material is already published on the Internet, the instructor can supply the URL to the existing web page. When students access the syllabus or material document within the Semester Book, they are seamlessly redirected to the supplied URL.

The attachment option allows any file to be attached to the syllabus or material document. Students can then either view the material over the web or download the material for their own copy.

Syllabi Module

Under the Syllabi module the instructor can create one syllabus for each course. Information such as course pre-requisites, requirements, and schedule can be entered and displayed on the syllabus document for students to view.

The syllabus documents are named after the course they represent and are sorted alphabetically, as shown in Figure 8a. By clicking on the course name, the syllabus document is opened for viewing, displayed in Figure 8b.

Figure 8a Figure 8b

Materials Module

The Materials module, supporting text, audio, and video allows the instructor to post any material, which would normally be distributed in class. All notes, assignments, extra reading material, even lecture slides can be published on the web for students to access.

When creating a new material, the instructor supplies the material’s title and may also input publication dates. Publication dates allow the instructor to create materials at any time, but have them accessible by the students only during certain days within the semester. If no publication dates are entered, the material will be accessible throughout the current semester.

Students view the materials titles sorted descending by modification date, as shown in Figure 9a. By clicking on the material title, the material document is opened as displayed in Figure 9b.

Figure 9a Figure 9b

Semester Book Discussion Module

The Discussion module provides an interactive environment in which a student can initiate discussions among other students or with the instructor. It provides for asynchronous collaboration on assignments, projects, or any class-related topic. Within the Discussion module, students can create a new topic as well as view all existing topics or select by author or category (as shown in Figure 10).

Figure 10

Summary

The Semester Book has been an evolving project. It has been piloted longer than most projects to allow for input from a variety of faculty members representing each of LSU’s senior colleges. An added benefit has been that members of the technical development team in the Enterprise Solution Group are also part-time instructors. This has allowed them to use and critique the features of the Semester Book in a production mode. Modules being considered for the future include a student personal web page index, on-line testing, and submission of homework assignments. While the Semester Book was initially designed to support faculty teaching traditional campus-based courses, its features are also being reviewed for use in the instruction of asynchronous learning courses.