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Office of Institutional Research

Month: April 2016

Cycle 34

Apr 25, 2016 – May 6, 2016

Work on our sandbox server has gotten back-burnered the last couple cycles and we are getting in sight of our July 30 end of Redhat license. First priority this cycle is getting all of our various applications running on the sandbox server with the new stack so we can make decisions about new servers.

Work with student data loading has shown us that the very manually tweaked data load is not sustainable. We are looking at an alternative approach that doesn't attempt to create an artificial "degree progress" record which doesn't exist in UW student data. Instead we are looking at a data model that is tightly coupled to how UW represents student records. This changes the context of our STEP views, but allows us to refresh and integrate with official UW student data much more easily and accurately.

Work Planned

Infrastructure

  • Sync all web content and databases from COE production server to sandbox for current testing environment.
  • Install Shibboleth (UW single sign on software) on sandbox.
  • Update all COE applications to work with Shibboleth while maintaining backward compatibility with PubCookie.
  • Sandbox network and firewall configuration.
  • Help research and resolve Drupal 7 / PHP 7 issues.

Courses

  • Continue refinement of course buy-out & merit reporting based on user feedback.

Student

  • Create plan (database diagram) for new student data model. Review data model agains existing STEP functionality and upcoming reporting requirements.
  • Create base student record tables (current, completes, major_quarter) and update load process to populate these tables.
  • Requirements document for comments and attachments in STEP. Meet with stakeholders.

Test Scores

  • Update data model (create database diagram) based on experience so far with test score data.

 

 

Cycle 33

April 11 – April 22

We are continuing work on the tool supporting faculty merit reporting and student data load. Initial implementation of student data load is complete and we are doing iterative comparisons of system loaded data to manually currated data to refine our load process.

The first ECFS application cycle using the Apply portal is finishing up this week. We have identified a short list of projects that will make Apply/Appreview more useful to ECFS.

We have a June deadline for operating system update on our web servers, work continues on the sandbox environment.

Work Complete

Apply/Appreview

  • Email template editor has font and font-size picker. Uses line breaks instead of paragraph blocks.
  • Material uploaded by applicant through Apply portal properly marked as applicant upload. Not deletable, but can be hidden.
  • User view of Apply Cycle configurations (what applicants can apply for using Apply portal). Apply Cycle configuration allows application to be marked complete automatically on submit.
  • Email workflow for sending email to applicants who have started an application in the Apply portal, but not submitted it.

Courses

  • Daily update is modified to update previous quarter in addition to future quarters. This insures that when quarters end, local courses data is synced to actual in the UW Time Schedule.
  • Migration script for faculty merit reporting that updates database for new entities.

MRBS

  • MRBS Room schedule has preview image and links to the detailed about page in the COE Technology blog.

Student

  • Nightly update runs that will change students with inactive statue to Registered or On Leave. Nightly update also adds new students. This nightly load will supplement the quarterly load which has significant manual adjustments to merge major changes over time.
  • UW Quarters table in EDUC project (Person, Testscores, Appreview, new student) which updates on a schedule from UW student web service term resource.
  • Adjusted Milestone update schedule to focus on currently enrolled students. Additionally any time a user views a student detail page in STEP that students credits and milestones get updated from the UW student web service.

 

Work Planned

Apply

  • User view of Apply Cycle configuration viewable by any Appreview user
  • Template and report to send email to applications started in Apply, but no submitted
  • Apply Cycle configuration option for applications to automatically be marked complete
  • Material submitted by student through Apply portal should not be deletable by staff

Course

  • Faculty merit reporting

Students

  • Existing STEP system is not updating credit and milestone data frequently enough
  • Analyze differences between automated student data load and currated student data, revise load system 
  • Update UW quarter data from web service
  • Build a system to calculate the quarter a student was first enrolled and last enrolled with in a major/degree path

Test Scores

  • All test score types should have a strategy for importing unknown PESB assessment codes
  • Create notes on test score data model and load strategy based on six months worth of real world experience

Infrastructure

  • Copy all web content from production server to sandbox
  • Install and configure Shibboleth on sandbox 
  • Review sandbox firewall rules for SSH login 

Cycle 32

March 28 – April 8

This cycle we are working on a tool to help faculty complete their annual merit reports. This new report will pull data from various systems relevant to merit reports. A single view will list courses taught, course buy-outs, students advised, students completed, and grants with proposals and awards.

We are also working on an automated load of student data. Currently our student database is loaded quarterly from UW data. However the loaded data goes through a fair amount of manual adjusting. This limits our ability to load frequently and keep the data as fresh as we would like. We are working on building an application that can implement all of the manual corrections so that data can be refreshed on a regular basis. At the same time we are revising our local data structure so the system can provide more useful reporting for student services and advisors.

Work Complete

Apply

  • Limit applicant uploads to PDF or Word files
  • Helpful message for file too larger error
  • Fix Enter Scores list in Appreview included un-submitted applications

Courses 

  • Faculty Merit Report

Person 

  • Edit person descriptor. Person descriptors briefly answer "who is this?" and guide system authorization decisions. When the system generated summay is not helpful a user can enter a manual descriptor. 
  • Auth audit report

Student 

  • Design and implement new student tables that support advanced reporting
  • Load process for UW SDB (student data) into college database. Initial process, we will look at how this compares to the heavily managed data in STEP and continue to improve the loader.
  • Debugging view to compare new student list to existing in STEP