News

10/12/2015 – 10/23/2015

We made an adjustment to the Appreview Plus plan based on conversations with initial users. Filter reporting project was moved up and email system was postponed.

This cycle our main focus continues to be the new applicant review system, on track for a November launch. We will be meeting with SME to demo the early work complete and make sure we are on track. We also are building a couple test score reports for reporting required by PESB State of Washington.

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Report filters. Implemented interactive report filters following the convention from courses. In list views the report parameters are displayed as headings. Clicking the headings provides access to "picker" inputs which allow you to choose options and change what is included in the report. We have pickers for time period, programs, degrees, decision status and advisor status.
• Attachment type clean up. We were using one string for attachment types imported locally and a second for files from MyGrad. This was causing some file not found errors. Fixed now.
• Review committees management tools.
• Authorization system. Refined permission system and user roles. Reorganized URL generation system, simpler, clearer, works better with authorization scheme. User edit forms.
• External user management tools including a download configuration as spreadsheet, edit it, upload it to change external user configuration. 
• Application material settings.
• Program settings.

Test Scores

• SQL reports for PESB reporting using configured requirement rules and evidence rules to match test score to PESB requirements.

Recruitment

• Customized prospective student forms for use at recruiting events.

Students

• Added latin endorsement to teaching certificate configuration.
• Updated ECFS pathways for T&L students.
• More work on dissertation credit milestone.

Infrastructure

• Fixed time synchronization problem on web servers.

 

Work Planned

Appreview Plus

• Configuration tools including: user management, external users, review committee configuration, program configuration, material configuration.
• Workflow reports for OSS: needs decision, needs update in MyGrad.
• Email system. This will have the same function as current SOARS system but with more flexibility for selecting recipients and better logging of what was sent.
• Data update improvements (stretch goal). We've booked 9-10 days of development work for the cycle, but if we can get ahead of it we will be working integrating with the Grad Schools new version of the application web service and revising our initial SOARS import process to only grab the new/local data.

Courses

• Bring in enrollment details for independent study course offerings to allow for precise calculation of student credit hours per instructor.

Students

• Update temporary data used for ECFS students to correctly represent multiple ECFS pathways.
• Report of doctoral "near completers" based on number of dissertation credits completed.

Test Scores

• Reports for PESB

09/28/2015 — 10/09/2015

This cycle will be returning to Appreview Plus with the goal of switch to this system in November. Appreview Plus is a new implementation of our online applicant review system that decouples us from the Grad School data feed allowing us to keep access to historical data, support local application (applications not through MyGrad) and better integrate with student data in STEP.

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• OSS degree/GPA evaluation
• Set advisor
• Upload a transcript
• Links to UW / MyGrad policy documents
• Manage Application Material. Add OSS evaluations and upload material attachments. Quick edit toggles for Material complete and contingency.
• Coursework: missing coursework displayed on Application detail page. Management tools to create courses and default course collections by Path. OSS tools for marking courses incomplete and/or contingency.
• Upload recommendation attachment
• Show test scores from TestScore repository in Appreview. This includes official ACT/SAT from UW SDB.
• Set final decision tool and set advisor tool accessible from Application detail page.
• Reviewer dashboard with graph visualization of review progress and decisions. Interactively click on graph or headings to see mini report of applicants (Admits, Denies, My Advisees, etc).

Courses

• Accurately distribute credit hours for independent study course in faculty activity report

Grants

• Grants update process adjusted for changes to Grants data in UW EDW.

Person

• Merge person record tools. We import person information from multiple systems and sometimes don't have shared identifiers. Tool to merge Person records throughout the system, search for existing records and does automatic merging nightly, has user interface for manual merging. Keeps merge history log.
• Update Applicant records from UW SDB (via EDW) in nightly maintenance routine.

Recruitment

• New recruitment half-sheet for at event workflow.

Student

• Add milestone for completed 27 dissertation credits
• Merge R&I milestones
• Milestone changes for Doctoral Supervisory Committee and Reading Committee moved to production.

Testscores

• Add applicant population to ACT/SAT import from UW SDB.

Work Planned

Appreview Plus

• OSS degree/GPA evaluation
• Set advisor
• Upload a transcript
• Links to UW / MyGrad policy documents
• Material OSS evaluation
• Upload material attachment
• Display coursework
• Coursework edit tools
• Upload recommendation attachment
• UW official test scores
• Set final decision

Courses

• Accurately distribute credit hours for independent study course in faculty activity report

Student

• Add milestone for completed 27 dissertation credits
• Merge R&I milestones

08/31/2015 — 09/11/2015

We merged cycles 17 & 18 into a super cycle. Paul had vacation so it was shortened. Additionally we were working on Test Score repository which ended up being a very fluid (figure out the requirements as we built it) kind of project. We have a the functional base of test score repository working that will support our reporting process for PESB (Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board).

Work Complete

Courses

• Report of all courses with any tags and a list of all the tags each course has

Students

• Fixed a problem with import of initial advisors from Applicant Review. Added this as an automated job.
• Corrected endorsement addition certificate type
• More readable view of doctoral supervisory committees. Separate view of reading committee.
• Added longitude and latitude to placement institutions in STEP to support visualizations of teacher placements in Tableau.

Recruitment

• Tool to import a spreadsheet of prospective students into recruitment database (eg. sign up sheets from events and info sessions, shared data from other organizations).

Test Scores

• Imported all available test score data including WEST-B, WEST-E, NES, ACTFL, Praxis, and edTPA from data files provided by testing agencies and ACT and SAT from UW test score data.
• Provide summary counts of test scores in system by type along with percentage that have been matched to college person records.
• Use SDB system key in test score import fields to match test scores to person records
• Search for test scores by person. Searches college person records (students & applicants) and also person information found in test score import files.
• Test score detail view
• Forms to add test scores to system. Forms for each test score type that provides custom fields appropriate to that test score.
• Created a user interface for defining certificate and endorsement requirement rules and defining evidence rules which specify the test scores that satisfy requirements.
• Provided SQL queries so evidence for PESB reporting can be extracted from database.

Infrastructure

• Migrated this blog from UW Blog Network to College of Education center/dept server

Work Planned

Test Scores

• Import all files in Google Drive sample files, review import code for ongoing usage
• Import SAT and ACT from UW data
• UI to create Requirements, Requirement Rules, and Evidence Rules

08/17/2015 — 08/28/2015

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Page titles (in Appreview Plus and in Budgets and Person)
• Recently viewed in application menu
• Application deadlines
• Display application review committee. Tools to set recommendation and scholarship
• Tool to add a comment
• Faculty dashboard view – set up and first couple elements, more to come
• Academic Support Team tools for set final decision and set advisor
• Report system with parameters (Report object query the database for related data to display on web pages and have parameters that can be adjusted for context or by the user)

Courses

• Allow course numbers to be reused over time. Review system for any place where curriculum abbreviation and course number are assumed to identify a course and include effective year and quarter. Put in back-log for other work
• GUI to set the update through quarter, start UW Time Schedule update process, and provide info about who changed setting and if update is currently running.
• Further refinements to application configuration system that incorporates database settings

Grants

• Improve grant data import process to prioritize “Principal Investigator” over other grant roles.

Students

• Refine PESB placement editing tools for actual work flows. Decided to change this from a “defaults” tool to a bulk edit tool.
• Placement tool that creates or edits a placement record for each student in a cohort.

Test Scores

• Sync student data from STEP to Person database
• Modify update process to match existing test score records and not insert duplicates
• Build person matching routine that compares person data from import files to students and applicants in our system are relates test scores to the correct people
• Plan Requirement entities and rules for automatically applying Evidence to Requirements.

Work Planned

Appreview Plus

• Page titles
• Recently viewed in application menu
• Application deadlines
• Set recommendation and scholarship
• Faculty dashboard view
• Academic Support Team tools for set final decision and set advisor
• OSS workflow tools for needs decision and needs update in MyGrad

Courses

• Report of all courses with any tag and list of all tags those courses have
• Allow course numbers to be reused over time. Review system for any place where curriculum abbreviation and course number are assumed to identify a course and include effective year and quarter.
• GUI to set the update through quarter, start UW Time Schedule update process, and provide info about who changed setting and if update is currently running.
• Further refinements to application configuration system that incorporates database settings

Test Scores

• Sync student data from STEP to Person database
• Modify update process to match existing test score records and not insert duplicates
• Build person matching routine that compares person data from import files to students and applicants in our system are relates test scores to the correct people
• Plan Requirement entities and rules for automatically applying Evidence to Requirements.

08/03/2015 — 08/14/2015

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Map out full transition from SOARS to Appreview Plus with timeline
• Show attachments and make them downloadable
• Add comments pane to application detail and add comment tool
• Tool to edit deadlines when rules based deadlines are wrong
• Fixed application degree dates display

Courses

• Change division configuration for new Associate Dean
• Fix parameter header for Courses by ROU report
• Remove reference to comments “under construction” in offering detail About tab

Grants

• Fixed proposal download did not include the same records as proposal HTML report

Students

• Automated update. SME readable documentation (flow chart?) shows where data comes from and how statuses are decided.
• Update pre 2014 Field Placement PESB data with required hours, weeks, and placement type information
• Fix PESB default table year-qtr sorting function
• Add link to edit placement institutions tool

Test Scores

• Build test score repository in database tables
• Build import process for existing test score spreadsheets

Work Planned

• Appreview Plus
• Courses
• Grants
• Students
• Test Scores

07/20/2015 — 07/31/2015

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Complete automated update process
• Fix person import – names getting replaced with external reviewer names
• Promote to production – activate daily Grad School updates
• De-activate SOARS secondary update process for ap_* tables. Make appreview tables in EDUC database the authoritative tables
• Refine application detail view. Build a UI vocabulary for sections.

Courses

• Include all general education requirements
• Get Term data from UW Student Web Service
• Add details of repetition rules to download CSV file
• Fix offering headers on pages where header has gray background
• Tool to create more offerings based on repetition rules
• Fix ROU Undergraduate and Professional filters cross linked

Work Planned

• Appreview Plus
• Courses
• Students – planned work missed, moved to Cycle 15