Forum .LRN Q&A: live demo of dotTeach

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Posted by Rafael Calvo on
Hi

I have set up a server when you can test dotTeach a course/syllabus administration/ catalog tool that acts as a repository of course designs and automatically does some of the administration work that academics normally do manually.

http://129.78.27.143:8006/dotlrn/?&page%5fnum=3
login as mailto:guest@weg.ee.usyd.edu.au / 'Test'

I would very much appreciate your feedback

cheers

Rafael

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2: Re: live demo of dotTeach (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Dear Rafael, sadly there is no documentation available so it is a little bit hard to test your module if the goal is not clear. Do you have it handy somewhere so we can take a look at it ?

Thanks
Malte

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Posted by Jon Suen on
Hello,

I am currently hosting the documentation for different user types in dotTEACH here:
http://www.users.on.net/~jsuen/tif-project/Manuals_pdf.zip
(about a 1mb download, 4 *.pdf files)
Alternatively a large *.doc distro is here:
http://www.users.on.net/~jsuen/tif-project/Manuals_doc.zip

I will be reworking these manuals very soon, as some tools have changed.

I can be openly contacted regarding the development of this package at the email address I've registered here.

Cheers,
Jon

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4: High level docu needed (response to 1)
Posted by Peter Monien on
Hi Jon,

I am very interested in learning about dotTEACH. Could you point me to a document that explains the overall idea of dotTEACH and the overall functionalities? Thanks in advance!

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5: Re: live demo of dotTeach (response to 1)
Posted by Caroline Meeks on
The password doesn't seem to be working....maybe someone reset it?

Thanks

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Posted by Jon Suen on
Thanks Caroline, I have updated the password:

Login email (ID): mailto:guest@weg.ee.usyd.edu.au
Password: demo

Peter: An older revision to the abstracted documentation of dotTEACH is available under the /doc directory of the package, here:
http://129.78.27.143:8006/weg-course-info/doc/

(UPDATE: Clicking on the referential 'Help' link in the navbar with dotTEACH installed will refer the user to the user manuals based on type, to give a greater detail into the guide of the functionalities; please note some [3] of these manuals are *.pdf versions)

Cheers,

Jon

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7: Re: live demo of dotTeach (response to 1)
Posted by Caroline Meeks on
Hi Jon,

I got in but I couldn't do much. I didn't have permission on the outline links and the Resource links were all file not found.

Can you help?

Thanks
Caroline

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Posted by Jon Suen on
Hi Caroline,

The permissions system with dotTEACH is such that professors (currently)
have a more limited access in regards to administrational duties.
I've just set up two more accounts on the server, to illustrate the
functionalities of a Department admin and Site-wide admin respectively:

email: mailto:deptadmin@demo.co
password: demo

email: mailto:swadmin@demo.co
password: demo

(Currently both accounts are not registered as a Professor to any
subject, so no units will come up in the drop-down box on the portal page)
Essentially, site-wide administrators will be able to add new subjects,
streams these subjects are allocated to, add/remove memberss
(professors) to these units, as well as designate which department
administrators are allocated to which department.

Any problems feel free to let me know, thanks

Jon

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9: Re: live demo of dotTeach (response to 1)
Posted by xx xx on
Is dotTeach a package that could be added to dotLRN one day or am I missing the point and is its implementation broader?

My first impression (from your docs) is that dotTeach is a documentation (outline) package for courses. It is meant to communicate the purpose of a course to students in a structured manner.

Probably, it's more than just documentation and can be used for more than just courses.

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Posted by Jon Suen on
Hi,

Yes, dotTeach is a package used for streamlining the process of adding course information for subjects, to be used in a number of areas across a Faculty.
It should allow for communication of this information to students (external visitors), and as well as amongst course coordinators, by way of reporting tools developed so that information can be shared between these coordinators and administrators.

It is designed to be more than a documentation package, as it currently is used in conjunction with a stateful workflow process, uses content repositories of information (in parts) and also tools that are more application-specific (such as email forms, and graduate attribute reports). I guess this could be demonstrated easier on the server site (above), which you are more than welcome to test out.

I am not entirely sure about the implementation border for dotTeach, though.

Cheers,

Jon

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11: Questions about dotTEACH (response to 8)
Posted by Peter Monien on
Hi Jon,

finally I found time to read the high level description of dotTEACH and click thouth the demo system you kindly provided. I took a lot of screenhots and pasted them in a document in order to have everything in one doc.

First let me thank you for the great work you have done and the already delivered system. I am longing to have it installed by Malte and do a test szenario with it on our demo server and present it to some German universities!

A few question appeared when I clicked through the system as a user:

1.) Graduate Attributes - in the exmaple of Aeronautical Engineering I see five GAs. Is this number fixed or would it be possible to add more, lets say ten GAs?

2.) Curriculum Maps - unfortunately I don't find an exmaple for the Curriculum maps under "View Courses and GA Maps". How would they look like, I guess similar to " Graduate Attribute Maps" with the semesters listed and the coloured boxes for the UoS?

3.) View Assessment Schedules for Units - Why is this restricted to four UoS? A student normally has more courses than four.

4.) Step 3: Where can I select a UoS to get some information displayed in step 3?

5.) I guess step 4 basically links to a community in .LRN that has teachers and academic managers as members? Or is there something special with special new tools etc.?

6.) Step 5: I just don't get a reaction of the system, when I click on this link? What is supposed to do and how do I get the system to display the information to me?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Peter

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Posted by Jon Suen on
Hello Peter,

Thank you for the kind comments and interest in the project. I am just a developer on the project; Rafael and Surath had primarily been the ones heading the development long before I came on. Though it is good to know that there is some (possible) re-implementation in other universities & colleges abroad.

In response to your queries:
1) Are you referring to the Graduate Attribute Report (ga_list) ? If so, it is possible to have it query more (or different) GA's; I originally had it query every possible GA in the database, based on entries by subject coordinators - but found this to extend that particular drag-down box much too long (around 200+ rows!); though it depends on how such attributes will be implemented in other places.

2) Yes, you are correct - though Curriculum Maps should effectively still show up; try this location:
http://129.78.27.143:8006/weg-course-info/course_maps?stream=2476
(of course, as more subjects appear and degrees are populated then this will be more 'complete', too).
Pre-requisite subjects for chosen units of study will also be highlighted in different colours.

3) For the purposes of our implementation, a student normally participates (on average) in four subjects per semester (term). This can easily be implemented to five, or six, but it will also change the size of the resulting schedule display.

4) On the main dotTEACH page, Step 3. (and the single Step 5.) tasks are not currently implemented - they may eventually link to our own (other) university services, and thus may not be applied generically. Sorry about the confusion, I should remove these steps from the page sometime.

5) You're right, Step 4. links to the communities, sub-communities etc. that a user is a member of. We have primarily designed dotTEACH with the focus that the main base of users are not familiar with dotLRN, and thus provide a symbolic link to some of the services that dotLRN provides (such as community forums, messages, etc.).

6) What link do you click to that doesn't receive a response? Sorry, I don't think the link you pasted showed up . :)

Cheers,

Jon

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Posted by Peter Monien on
Hi Jon,

thanks a lot for the fast answer! We are talking to more than 20 universities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and try to convince them to choose .LRN as their LMS.

And I will definitly bring dotTEACH to their attention. I think it's a great tool and really deserves to have a broad installation base!

Potentially dotLEARN might be a really good fit for European universities as they are right now in the process of switching to the international Bachelor and Master scheme. But contact to the universities has to proove how dotTEACH will be able to help them there.

Cheers
& many greatings to Rafael and Surath,

Peter

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14: dotTeach Links (response to 13)
Posted by Jon Suen on
Hello all,

A brief update on the dotTEACH package:

- Developer's documentation manual is now available here:
http://www.users.on.net/~jsuen/tif-project/developers_manual.pdf
or, a *.doc version:
http://www.users.on.net/~jsuen/tif-project/developers_manual.doc
(it is up-to-date for the current release of dotTEACH, 0.91a)

- User guides (to aid in navigating the application) are available at the demo site:
http://129.78.27.143:8006/dotlrn/help
(and mostly contain links to *.pdf versions of the guides)

- The package itself (source code) can be downloaded here:
http://www.weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/software/

Cheers,

Jon