IUSM Educational Technology

BCS checklist auto-generated emails

Float Check — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:02:09 +0000

Per Dr. Humbert’s request, I have completed an additional feature to the BCS checklist Master Log. Along with the BCS checklist Master Log running every night, Dr. Humbert wanted to be able to have automatic emails sent out to 3rd and 4th year students. These emails are an effort to notify students of BCS requirement deficiencies. The goal of the emails is to notify 3rd year med students every 3 months of what BCS requirements are missing and the deadlines of completion. 4th year students are to receive the same basic email, along with some additional verbage, every month. Due to the fact that 4th year students will be graduating this academic year. The additional feature has been added to the BCS checklist Master Log. The first set of emails went out on Oct. 15th. In speaking with Dr. Humbert, it looks like the emails are fulfilling their purpose. Dr. Humbert and I have been inundated with emails from 3rd and 4th year students concerning their BCS requirements. Mostly in the area of the student not being aware that they were missing some requirements. I have been working closely with Dr. Humbert in an effort to help each student meet the requirements and modify any incorrect clerkship encounters.

Rural Medicine (ICM-I/ICM-II) form modification

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:31:27 +0000

I’ve been working with Sue Maple and Dr. Hilgarth on the specifications for the ICM-I and ICM-II form modifications. Students in Terre Haute have been issued handheld devices to log encounters as part of a new Rural Medicine project. As part of this project, the ICM-I and ICM-II forms needed to be modified. Both forms are to have the exact same field data, with one minor exception. The ICM-II form will have an additional field for Group and Preceptor. This field will be specifically for Indianapolis ICM-II students only. Therefore, I’ve created a single ICM form that will be accessed from two separate links. Each link will pass the clerkship value of ICM-I or ICM-II. The new form will display the proper data based on the ICM link that was accessed. If an ICM-I student accesses the form, their form will be identical to the ICM-II form, but without the Group and Preceptor options. Whereas, if an ICM-II student accesses the form, he/she will have the Group and Preceptor option. I decided to use one form mainly for the reason of future updates. Since both forms had the exact same fields, updating one form (the ICM form) would propagate to both ICM-I and ICM-II students. This form also incorporates some AJAX technology in displaying the Preceptor drop-down based on the Group selection on the ICM-II form.

Google style search feature added to edit/manage CERTTS accounts

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:06:05 +0000

In the past few months, I’ve been interested in creating a Google style search to the admin page in CERTTS. In the past, the search term was based solely on what was typed in the text box of the edit/update accounts page. I was interested in having the ability to suggest (to the user entering the search term) names in the accounts table that the user may be searching for. The edit/update accounts page now has the flexibility to search for accounts by last name or by username. When the user starts typing the search term, a Google style suggestion box appears below the text box. Based on what the user is typing, the script will access the database and display last names or usernames similar to what the search term is. As the user completes more of the text in the search box, the possible matches will become fewer as the suggestions narrows down the possibilities. This allows the user to begin the basic spelling of the name being searched and then choose from a drop-down list of suggestions that match the criteria. Now that I’ve completed this suggestions script, I’m looking into ways that this suggestion style search can be implemented on more of the CERTTS forms.

Removing Palm data from public syncing stations

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:57:39 +0000

Wilfredo and I discussed the issue of student data being stored on the public syncing stations when a student syncs forms data. This data not only is not needed, but the data is sometimes personal in nature and (over time) takes up disk space. In the past, the directory that houses the synced data was deleted manually. Which in some instances can take up quite a bit of time. We’ve discussed the possibility of creating a nightly process that will delete that unwanted and unneeded synced data. I have completed a system process, installed on the public syncing station in Wilfredo’s area, that will delete that data automatically each night and restore the Palm OS directory. The process will be tested over the next few days and will be deployed to all public syncing stations when I have confirmed that the process runs without a hitch.

Emergency Medicine form update

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:50:22 +0000

Stacey Jackson has requested that additional names be added to the ‘Supervising Physician’ field and an additional location be added to the location field on the EM clerkship form. Previously, students needed to type in the supervising physician’s name in the free text field, when completing an EM clerkship form. Due to the fact that ‘Elkhart General’ needed to be added to the list of locations and the fact that there were specific physician names that needed to be accessed via a drop-down list, modifications were needed for the form. I’ve incorporated AJAX into the EM form. Now, when students select the location of the encounter, they will see different types of fields for the supervising physician field. For instance, when a student selects the Elkhart location, they will be supplied with a drop-down list of the physicians. If a student selects any other location, they will be supplied with a free text field to type the physician’s name (as they have in the past). Now the EM form satisfies the needs of all students filling out an EM clerkship form, no matter the location of the encounter.

Student Email notification for BCS

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:41:49 +0000

Along with the BCS Clerkship log, Dr. Humbert wanted the logs (as they run nightly) to email any students, once a month, that have missing BCS encounter data. I’ve added that functionality to the ‘filtered’ BCS log. Any students in the current graduating class (4th years) that show up on the log with missing encounter data, will receive an email that details what encounters are displaying on the reports and what is missing. These students will be able to see what encounter types they have met the minimum requirements on and what encounters they have not. This email will also display a message (written by Dr. Humbert) explaining the timeframe in which these students have to complete these requirements. The email script is working correctly and is ready for use. I’m just waiting for Dr. Humbert to supply me with the text that will be incorporated on the emails and what the deadlines will be.

BCS Clerkship log

Float Check — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:35:45 +0000

Dr. Humbert made a request to have an updated BCS Clerkship log similar to the EM Clerkship log. He wanted to be able to access an html style page that would have up-to-date info on students who have logged BCS encounters. This becomes particularly relevant during the student’s 4th year. Students are required to have a certain number and type of BCS encounters logged before graduation. This log would enable Dr. Humbert to track student progress in an effort to communicate with the student on necessary remediation. Two BCS logs have been created. The first is a ‘filtered’ log that displays all students who have logged BCS encounters, but are missing some of the minimum requirements for encounters. The second is an ‘unfiltered’ log that displays all students who have logged encounters, whether they have met all of the minimum requirements or have some discrepancies. Both logs are updated nighly by a system process that I’ve developed. Each log links the student name to their individual BCS reports. Dr. Humbert is able to quickly and efficiently manage progress of the students and access the full details of the clerkship encounters. The logs have been running for a few weeks now and (as of yet) Dr. Humbert has not had any modifications to the logs and how they display the data.

Web dev: Genetic Disorders & Birth Defects site

Michael A. Taylor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:49:22 +0000

Watson and I talked about migrating cfserve, and it’s sites. I’ve already loaded the Coldfusion 8.0 software onto the main webserver, and the server admin interface appears to be working well. Now that CF is on spidey, I can begin to move the Geneinfo website database out of MS Access and into Sql server. Once the database move is complete, I’ll start the process of re-doing the design/development of the Geneinfo front-end. Keeping in mind, that I’ll need to develop a web interface for the library staff to be able to login and add, update and delete records in the database. Need to consider a way for library staff to also perform any updates to the web front-end, without needing to know html. Will consider using Contribute.

mat

Angel upgraded to 7.4

Michael Bangert — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:39:14 +0000

On Thursday, July 2nd, Angel was upgraded to the newest version and migrated to new hardware. To prepare for the upgrade, I used VMWare to configure a server that replicated our 7.3 installation, and ran the upgrade on that server 3 times to become aware of any problems that might crop up. The upgrade was complicated by the fact that I was not only upgrading the system, but migrating to new hardware and changing the DNS name of the server. The old address was daly.medicine.iu.edu, which people had trouble remembering. It is now angel.medicine.iu.edu which is probably what people would guess it to be if they did not know for sure. Additionally, Angel has been configured since the beginning her to use a virtual directory (/med), which I did not replicate since it complicates administration of the system and is sometimes unsupported by Angel Learning. ePortfolio was upgraded as well, but I did not run this upgrade until the following Monday. The URL for ePort changed as well, becoming eportfolio.medicine.iu.edu. ePort’s URL change is not as dramatic, since you get to ePortfolio through Angel. There are some historical portfolios on the system which will not be available from their previous public url, but all of these are dormant. ePortfolio is not heavily used here at IUSM, although the concept of a portfolio system is attractive to a number of faculty.

On July 2, I came in around 4:30am to begin the process of migrating to a new server and upgrading Angel. The process went well and was completed at around 6:20am. I spent the remainder of the day cleaning up broken URLs and testing functionality of high profile courses. I also brought up a virtual server which could capture anyone coming to daly.medicine.iu.edu, and present a page with the new URL.

The change that impacts our Angel course editors the most is the deprecation of quizzes. All the quizzes in our Angel system have now been converted to Assessments, which have more features but a different interface for creating and editing. A close second for the biggest change is the way that support for IE 6 has pretty much fallen off the cliff. Angel 7.3 did not support IE 6, but it worked most of the time. Angel 7.4 has definitely left IE 6 behind. For some IUSM faculty, installing IE 7 is not an option because they don’t have administrator rights on their computer, and if they did, the Clarian apps have to use IE 6. The option for these faculty is Firefox which works fine with Angel, but they have to find their LSP and get Firefox installed. Sometimes they do not know who supports their PC and don’t want to mess with opening a support ticket to get a new browser, so this issue is tough in this environment.

The change for Angel admins is the move towards role-based access rights. After a day or so of reviewing the way that rights are granted now, this will not a problem for us to support. In the past, faculty and staff were bulk loaded into Angel with the default role of “student”. Due to the new way of granting rights based on roles, this has prompted some support calls but the fix is easy. We just have to change the user’s role from student to faculty or staff. Also different is the way that rights are granted to the historical “system editor”, but I created roles which duplicate the functionality that these people had in 7.3.

After a couple weeks, I discovered that we had been bitten by a bug which caused migrated assessements to lose the answers that were input into the original quiz. You can still see who took the test, and what their grade was but this didn’t help much for survey type responses where the answer was critical. However, my upgrade plan mitigated the risk of this type of problem by retaining the last-moment instance of the 7.3 install. For people that need the historical data, I have an instance of 7.3 as it existed on July 2nd, and I grant people a logon to use that version of Angel to retrieve survey or quiz results. Any assessments taken after 7/2 on the new system are available normally.

Angel 7.4 has been running for 2.5 weeks as of this post, and although not without problems, the upgrade has had less impact on day to day operations than has previous upgrades.

Investigating a ticket-based support system for Edtech and ANGEL

Michael A. Taylor — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:06:23 +0000

On July 21st there was a UITS infoshare on the new Footprints service desk application which has taken the place of the old Falcon service desk, or ticket tracking, system. In June, UITS completed the migration from Falcon to Footprints, so today was a brief demo of the product.

Owned by a company called Numara, the software appears very flexible and configurable and is very customizable due in part to the fact that when clients purchase the software, they get the source code included. IU has already purchased 100 concurrent seats and has the ability to purchase more on an as needed basis. There’s no charge to IU departments for one of the concurrent seats, but if a department wanted their own “fixed seat”, there would be a cost involved. Several departments are already using Footprints including LSP services, and the Department of Medicine and Nursing.

For departments to try Footprints out, they need to request a test project via a upcoming web form via https://footprints.iu.edu/projreq. UITS will create an instance for the project and it will be in a “testing phase” until such time as the department has prepared the application and it’s admins. have attended a 1 day training session. Once the departments project has been fully tested and UITS admins have been given ample notice, then the project will move from a testing environment to a production environment.
One important note on the role of the Project Admins., the UITS presenter did stress that when in testing phase, the project admins have full power over their project instance, but once it goes to the production environment, their powers are diminished dramatically (to the production instance of the project, not the testing instance.)

The applications organizational scheme consists of individual “projects” which would be various departments or teams instance of the Footprints application .
Project administrators–all rights and control over that departments instance (IU would like each group to have at least 1 admin and an alternate/backup.)
Agents —other support team members with specific rights
Issues— are request tickets in the system

All in all the Footprints application looks promising and it looks like it’s worth it plunge in and get a testing project. We really do need to address our lack of an efficient support tracking system for Educational Technology, and the Angel system.
for more on this topic check the UITS KB on Footprints…