FY2010 Q4

CCS FY10 Q4 Metrics Narrative.docx

Stellar

This quarter the team focused on two main areas - Stellar 2.3 and providing information to the Faculty Advisory Committee for their decision on the new Learning Management System.

While there were no patch releases during Q4, the team worked on many tasks for Stellar 2.3, which is due to be released at the end of FY11 Q1.  Stellar 2.3 updates include a new iCal (calendar) subscription, HASS icons for the Courseguide and major improvements to the performance and stability of the Stellar Gradebook.  There are additional plans to gradually phase out the existing and aging Sakai-based jForum and replace it with a third-party tool (phpBB).  CCS and SAIS also collaborated on the Institute’s Textbook Information Provision (TIP) project. The objective of the TIP project is to have the Registrar’s Online Subject Listing and Schedule call online textbook information from the OTI web service.

Over Q4, we completed our presentation of requirements and user ethnography findings to the Faculty Advisory Committee.  In continuing preparation for Stellar NG, the team also built-out several key LMS Evaluation requirements on Blackboard including Touchstone sign-on, course and membership popula-tion and changes (skinning) of the user interface.  A Blackboard demo was given to the FAC in late May.  A completed Drupal proof of concept was also presented to the committee.  An official recommendation from the FAC is forthcoming with their decision on the direction of Stellar NG.  In the interim, we have begun negotiations with Blackboard for a limited pilot of Blackboard in the Fall term.

Stellar’s peak usage reached 1086 on May 17, 2010, the highest concurrent usage recorded for the month of May.  This quarter, Stellar hosts 32 summer sites, 876 academic sites in the spring, and 895 project sites.  Over 90% of Institute subjects continue to use Stellar.

Metrics & Narratives for FY10 Q3 (Jan-Mar 2010)

CSS Fy10 Q3 Metrics Narrative
Stellar

     In Q3, the team continued to focus on automating and stabilizing Stellar. A significant amount of development time was devoted to improving the Courseguide by replacing several of its backend manual operations.  The display of course information is now automatically synchronized with term dates, making Stellar a more up-to-date resource for students and administrators at the start of term.

     In the two patches released during this period, the team updated the Gradebook, integrated an online textbook pricing information feed and addressed many bug fixes and improvement requests.  For the Gradebook, developers provided more options for both the student grade display and the administrative exporting of grades.  In partnership with the MIT Libraries, this March Stellar began pulling in publisher’s pricing information for course textbooks. This is a first step in fulfilling the Higher Education Act's new compliance requirements for textbook information.  Other Stellar updates include user-suggested changes to the Stellar portal, Email interface and Materials page.  Finally, a new version of the survey tool (Opinio) was tested and released to the Management Department.

     The team has made consistent efforts to communicate to various stakeholder groups about the process and progress of the LMS Evaluation.  These outreach efforts have included in-person meetings, roundtable events and news releases - with the objective of reaching a wide audience of students, faculty and staff.  We continue to gather, organize and present requirements to the Faculty Advisory Committee’s bi-monthly meetings.  In continuing the preparation for Stellar NG, the team has successfully installed the newly obtained Blackboard developer’s license and is continuing to research and test its integration points.  An initial Drupal proof of concept is also in place.  Once the FAC has provided a concrete recommendation, the staff will be busy building comparable instances of Blackboard and Drupal POCs for review by the Faculty Advisory Committee.

Stellar’s peak usage reached 1266 on February 3, 2010, the highest concurrent usage ever recorded for the month of February.  This quarter Stellar hosts 48 sites over IAP, 1022 academic sites in the spring, and 851 project sites.  Over 90% of Institute subjects continue to use Stellar.

Wikis

The MIT Wiki Service was hosting a total of 1,877 wiki spaces at the end of Q3, up from 1710 in Q2.  Of these, 167 were newly provisioned and comprised 86 class-related (i.e. linked to Stellar class sites) and 81 non-class-related spaces.  There were no major upgrades or patch releases during this quarter.

Detailed statistics on space usage: https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/WBS/Wiki+Stats+Q3+2010
Monthly usage graphs: https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/WBS/Monthly+Usage+Graphs

Thalia

This was the fifth quarter for Thalia in maintenance status and usage remained steady.  There are currently 19 active external Thalia domains in production with two domains exceeding the 10GB of free storage.  Three domains were provisioned during Q3.

Metrics & Narratives for FY10 Q2 (Oct-Dec 2009)

Update : FY10 Q2 Metrics Narrative.docx

CCS FY10 Q2 Metrics Narrative.docx

July through September 2009

FY10 Q1 Metrics and Narrative.docx

1. Automated semester transition
CCS developers spent many hours preparing Stellar components for the upcoming academic term. Most of the work involved changing term information  using a laborious and error prone process of manually changing files (spread across many Stellar components) to update term mappings (ex: 2010FA -> fa09), term Strings (ex: 2010FA -> Fall 2009). This information took the form of static hashtables (in java code), hardcoded values in XSL, fremarker templates and javascripts and in shell/perl scripts. Moving this information to the database and providing a basic admin interface will reduce developer time dedicated to these ongoing tasks.
What we’ve done thus far:
a) Provide a common API for everyone to access this information. The location for this is the stellar-two-jar project
b) Make sure the transition is automated (see @Stellar for example) or where not possible, provide an admin interface so that support personnel can make the transition.
2. Enhance site request to include bulk site creation
This step will remove developer’s time to create these manually; first on test and then on production.
The above should also include special site creation request. For example: SMA/DMA and Leader-to-Leader sites.
PE bulk site creation will be the biggest hurdle to completely automate this process. https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/STLR-1387

Remaining automation tasks are being addressed in Patches 11 and 12 as follows:

  1. Complete semester transition tasks related to term mapping for standalone webapps: Course Guide, @Stellar and the Gateway site.
  2. Improve production logging to reduce logging and debug clutter on servers.
  3. Automate the warehouse data transfer script.
  4. Provide clean way to delete (not archive) course sites that have been created erroneously (either by user request or by support).

April through June 2009

CCS Q4 MetricsandNarrative.docx 

January through March 2009

Q3 MetricsandNarrative.docx 

October through December 2008

MIT's Thalia focused on preparing for the community release, with particular attention paid to making the functionalities and features within the application more self-serve for users.  The development team made several settings editable through the Manage Domain area, a metadata wizard, and the ability to change an item's owner.  There is also support for Unicode so that items may be tagged with foreign characters.

On the backend, several steps were taken to make the Thalia application easier to support, namely enhanced monitoring tools, simplified backup and restoring, and scripts to make installation easier.  Thalia is also now integrated with MIT's Touchstone single sign on service for authentication. It also allows users to specify Moira groups to share items.

The team has finalized the terms of service for users and is in the process of finalizing support arrangements with training and the helpdesk.

Stellar 2.2.1 is slated for release in January 2009 for the Spring semester. A new interface for the survey tool, meant to improve usability and provide cleaner integration into the Stellar user experience, was released to the Sloan pilot users on December 20th.  Spring 2009 features include spreadsheet upload and role-based access to the Gradebook, a new drag and drop Materials interface, which had been postponed from the previous release, and textbook information listing required and recommended books and their ISBN numbers for courses in the CourseGuide.

Peak usage broke another record on October 15, 2008 with 1091 concurrent Stellar users. Averages over the quarter amounted to about 400 users. Stellar is currently hosting 25 IAP 2009 sites (most of these are in the PE department) and 319 Spring 2009 sites.

The MIT Wiki Service was hosting a total of 1094 wiki spaces at the end of Q2, up from 952 in Q1 2009. Of these, 145 were newly provisioned and comprised 43 class related (i.e. linked to Stellar class sites) and 102 non-class related spaces. The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments led with the highest number of departmental users (at 382) while IS&T remains the most avid departmental user of the wiki service, with the highest number of logins (20685).
 

July through September 2008

 Stellar 2.2 was released on August 25, 2008 for the Fall 2008 semester. It included new features and usability improvements to the Gradebook, enhanced OCW and eReserves workflow options in the site request process as well as tighter integration with information provided to students by the MIT Libraries. The User Guide and other documentation were enhanced with additional screenshots, updates and training videos. Hardware was upgraded for better performance and users saw their file size upload limit increase from 100 to 250 MB.

On Monday, September 8, 2008 Stellar hosted 1101 concurrent users, a new record.  In Q1 680 course sites and an additional 101 sites for the Physical Education Department were requested and provisioned. 623 non course related project sites were also created for use during the Fall semester. Currently 80% of possible Institute courses are on Stellar.

The MIT Wiki Service was hosting a total of 952 wiki spaces at the end of Q1, up from 719 in Q4 2008. Of these, 247 were newly provisioned and comprised 152 class-related (i.e. linked to Stellar class sites) and 95 non-class-related spaces. The Sloan School of Management led with the highest number of departmental users (at 448, up from 120 in Q4) while IS&T remains the most avid departmental user of the wiki service, with the highest number of logins (33604).   The Wiki Service has grown 295% since July 2007.
The TeamSpaces pilot, based on Jive Software's produce, Clearspace launched during the second week of September. As of the end of Q1, 5 classes in DUSP, the Writing Program, Political Science and Sloan are using the service. Several projects have signed on as well, including the cross-departmental Concentrated Solar Power on Demand project and the Innovations in International Health initiative. TeamSpaces uses MIT Touchstone, including CAMS, exclusively for authentication. Of the Oct 1 user base of 282, 24 users, most of them Tufts and Harvard students participating in an MIT DUSP course, were holders of MIT Touchstone collaboration accounts.

MIT's Thalia currently has thirteen DLCs as customers, up from 6 in January of 2008, with a total of 451 user accounts. Customers are using Thalia to store images destined for publications, images of MIT functions, and as a storefront to sell images. A total of 13,264 images, using 102.58 Gigabytes are stored on Thalia's secure servers. AP, HST, MISTI, PSB, and RD are the most active customers.  Thalia has grown 600% while in pilot over the past twelve months.

Report - 2008 06.23 to 06.27

TBC - EOD 2008 07.02

LMS Development

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User Interface and Design

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Community Tools and Applications

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Community Outreach and Research

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Report - 2008 06.16 to 06.20

LMS Development

  1. Calendar: Export vCal and iCal freemarker templates tested against dummy data from the backend
  2. Calendar: Modify template for schedule view to show short week names
  3. Calendar: Changes made to data model to accomplish the above
  4. Calendar: Compared and updated corrected templates and began testing on Amps-prog-5
  5. Gradebook: Merged ajax grade history into trunk to alleviate the script-too-long-http-500 error bug
  6. Gradebook: Refactored cumulative/weighted grade calculations to be done consistently and in one place
  7. Gradebook: Refactored all grade entry to be done consistently and in one place
  8. Gradebook: Normlized weighted cumulative grade in roster view and exported formats
  9. Gradebook: Enabled filtering of dropped students
  10. Gradebook: Fixed encoding problems with entering special characters
  11. Gradebook: Added warning for duplicate assignment titles or short names
  12. Gradebook: Diagnosed and fixed problem with amps-prog-5, classloader issues and incorrect db.properties settings in atstellar and courseguide

User Interface and Design

  1. Code validation/QA of Calendar and skins
  2. Materials page reconfig and prototyping
  3. Modified CAMS login page layout
  4. Mobility: Made final tweaks to m.mit.edu before launch of v 1.0
  5. Surveys: Placed updated version to amps-prog-5 for crtitique. Can be reached via surveys link from http://stellar-dev.mit.edu/S/project/testforarti/
  6. Gradebook: Various tweaks to ftl files ( roster.ftl,  details.ftl,  dashboard.ftl,  summary.ftl,  summaryChart.ftl )
  7. Gradebook: CSS adjustments to Gradebook graph
  8. Gradebook: Functional spec updates and information pertinent to test plan sent to QA
  9. CoursePicker/Atlas: Usability testing update sent to stakeholders

Community Tools and Applications

  1. Wup description of wikis cert and touchstone authentication for Hermes project
  2. Consolidated Wiki collection of technical docs regarding Clearspace
  3. Contacted Dean Barnhart re social networking needs
  4. IdM steering group meeting
  5. Confluence upgrade readiness work

Community Outreach and Research

  1. Reviewed and updated LMS feature comparison 
  2. Generated end-of-term message to users
  3. Worked with Diane Webster on documentation needs

Report - 2008 06.09 to 06.13

LMS Development

  1. Gradebook: Freemarker templates handed off to UI
  2. Gradebook: jQuery UI date picker implemented
  3. Gradebook: Investigated jQuery flot for summary chart
  4. Calendar: Freemarker templates handed off to UI
  5. Amps-prog 5 set up for general access
  6. Deployed user password changes to database for Stellar-test
  7. Set cronjob for checking pre-registration and registration info for summer 2008
  8. Documented server support changes for issues now handled by OIS
  9. Investigated Safari certificate problem under Mac OS X 10.5.3.  No repro.
  10. Completed Stellar 2.2 Wiki requirements

User Interface and Design

  1. Completed new semester image tweaks to Stellar home page
  2. UI CAMS meeting
  3. Completed Gradebook workflow diagram updates
  4. Began CAMS Login page layout redesign
  5. Began design of CAMS and core icon for WAYF login page
  6. Stellar 2.2 review meeting: https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/stellar22/UX+Mindmeld
  7. Updated UI tasklist for Stellar Fall release
  8. OTI: PHP SOAP client completed.
  9. OTI: demo completed and shared with CCSS team
  10. OTI: Working on enabling JSONP (cross domain ajax) for RESTFul web services
  11. OTI: Started on unit tests for web services

Community Tools and Applications

  1. Met with Staff Diversity council regarding Wiki  use
  2. Contaced Jive for more specific explanation of ClearSpace SSO integration
  3. Experimented with using php SOAP client  to populate Clearspace groups and spaces
  4. Worked on new MIT Confluence theme for 2.8
  5. Began testing Moira web service
  6. Continued investigation of problematic scaffolding plugin in Confluence
  7.  Continued working on modifications for Confluence MIT theme against 2.8

Community Outreach and Research

  1. Stellar demo for Mark Wiklund and Diane Webster from IS&T publishing; Diane is going to help us with documentation for the 2.2 release
  2. Met with MIT medical about potentially using Stellar as a medium for disseminating health and wellness information to faculty/students
  3. Approved summer and fall'08 sites
  4. Set up and populated a Stellar site for Diane Webster (technical writer) to use
  5. Responded to a number of general support issues from SDM related to access to past sites and general awareness about archiving policy
  6. Investigated issue with certificates in Safari on Leopard
  7. Reviewed latest client satisfaction surveys and followed up with unhappy clients
  8. Met with PE regarding use of the Stellar Gradebook
  9. Meeting with Bryan re customer support and RT process

Report - 2008 06.02 to 06.06

LMS Development

  1. Stellar 2.2 workplan revisions made, based on new task breakdown
  2. Updated JIRA tasks based on above
  3. Gradebook: Implemented makeup grade functionality
  4. Gradebook: jQuery table sorter interacted badly with our original design for the makeup grade layout (i.e., makeup grades had their own row), had to be redesigned
  5. Gradebook: Implemented letter grades in the back end, began front-end work
  6. Gradebook: Cleared up issues relating terminology, button placement, etc.
  7. Freemarker conversion: done for changeevent, event, pageIntroText, delete and csvCalendar xsl files.
  8. Freemarker conversion: Jquery date and time picker used for setting the event date/time in the template.
  9. Freemarker conversion: Behaviour of time picker modified as suggested by Joanna.
  10. Freemarker conversion: Updated the schedule view template to show up academic events when clicked Show Academic Calendar in the tool.
  11. Kuali student post-conference evaluation
  12. Moodle, ATutor review planning and review
  13. Continued consultant resume reviews
  14. Researched Touchstone and Touchstone CAMS integration development
  15. Completed OTI Web services (both SOAP and RESTFul services over HTTP)
  16. Completed OTI RESTful services support JSON, HTML and XML output
  17. OTI Apache CXF dependency abstracted cleanly

User Interface and Design

  1. UI SAIS meeting
  2. UI CAMS meeting
  3. Updated project files with all versions of Gradebook Makeup Grade mockups
  4. Completed version 2 of Stellar Dashboard design
  5. Reviewed Opinio UI work, Gradebook edits and Calendar front-end
  6. Stellar 2.2 review meeting: https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/stellar22/UX+Mindmeld
  7. Stellar tutorial video v1 completed
  8. CAMS - brainstorm meeting for user workflow on main pages - several tasks coming up in early June
  9. OmniPlan / Daptiv update
  10. Discussed Materials page updates with OCW
  11. Daptiv automation review with Amon
  12. 2.2 UI workplan revisions made, based on new tasks

Community Tools and Applications

  1. Reset some configurations on confab http and tomcat servers so app can reliably find latex utils for plugin operation
  2. Wiki presentation at IT Partners conference
  3. Discussed Moira web service issues, possibilities for Confluence with Dave Tanner
  4. Put together environment for building new MIT Confluence theme for 2.8
  5. Clearspace meeting with IPS
  6. Investigated Jira data report in Thalia project
  7. Fixed a bug that caused some non-MIT users not to get permissioned properly in Confluence under the right conditions
  8. IDN Steering group meeting- MIT membership in inCommon is imminent
  9. checking of current installed Confluence plugins against v. 2.8. most ok so far; scaffolding plugin problematic --  broken in 2.8 default theme, but works properly with 'classic' theme
  10. checking, identifying necessary modifications for Confluence MIT theme against 2.8
  11. Got app certificate from NIST so begin testing Moira web service

Community Outreach and Research

  1. Sloan Opinio feedback session
  2. Stellar 2.2. Documentation discussion with Mark Wiklund from IS&T publishing
  3. Stellar and wiki overview with Mech Eng faculty
  4. Gradebook review with Bolek
  5. Approved a number of summer and fall'08 sites
  6. Addressed several Opinio questions from Sloan and SMA
  7. Worked on clarifying documentation about exporting materials
  8. Began compiling a comprehensive list of features supported in Moodle, ATutor, Sakai, and Blackboard
  9. Researched Moodle and social constructivism
  10. Got in touch with Lori Breslow, Director of TLL (http://web.mit.edu/tll/index.html) to find out more about prominent teaching/learning styles, processes and pedagogies we need to support.