David
Aramant: User Manual, Testing
Ryan Cavanaugh:
Project Manager,
Requirements Analysis, Implementer
Robert Drake*: Design
Brian Klimaszewski:
Configuration
Manager, Implementer
Brian Kopecky: Design, Testing
Chris Moore:
Tester, Implementer
Mark Newheiser:
Tester, Implementer
Robert Layton:
Customer and consultant
Sonny Kirtley:
IAIT contact
*Note: left after Winter quarter
The goal of the software was to automate the process of assigning students to teams, based on instructor-selected criteria. Students would fill out a web-based survey, desired team attributes would be selected by the instructor, and an algorithm would assign students to teams based on those criteria.
By using this software, the huge burden for the instructor of creating teams solely by hand is hopefully lessened. Previously, team creation was an arduous process involving a lot of hand-sorted surveys that required careful inspections to prevent scheduling conflicts and to create well-balanced groups. Automating this process to some degree would free a lot of time for the instructor to engage in more pressing matters.
This manual is divided into several sections, each viewable by either following the links in the Table of Contents or scrolling down. At the end of each section is a link back to Table of Contents for convenience. The Overview of User Types provides a brief description of the capabilities of all the system's users. Task Overview shows all the tasks that the different users are capable of, along with a link to a more in-depth description of each task.
| User | Description |
| Student | Students can only fill out any pending surveys that they are authorized for and edit responses to previous surveys. Once the deadline for survey input has expired, the student is no longer able to change any responses. |
| Faculty | Faculty can create/edit survey questions, create/edit surveys, create/edit groups, and view statistical information about the team creation process. Faculty are only capable of manipulating their own surveys, groups, and questions. Each created survey will be available only for selected classes or students. Once the survey deadline has expired, Faculty are able to create teams by assigning weights to the different questions. The statistical results of this process can be viewed later, along with modifying the created teams. |
| Task | Description | User |
| Filling out a Survey | Provides a student with the ability to answer the questions that a Faculty member selected for proper group creation. |
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| Editing Survey Responses | Allows editing of previously saved responses. A student will not be able to change any responses after the survey deadline has expired. |
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| Creating Survey | Create a new survey for a class/group of classes/selected students. Faculty can pick and choose which questions to include in the survey. |
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| Editing Survey | Edit an unfinished survey. |
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| Creating Question | A new question can be created from a couple of defined question types. |
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| Editing Question | Allows the faculty to fix spelling errors in an existing question. |
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| Viewing Survey Summary | View a summary of survey responses. |
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| Creating Teams | Once the deadline for student surveys have expired, faculty can give each question a weight and create teams from this. |
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| Editing Teams | Editing the formed teams, perhaps taking into account questions that have no effect on the algorithm, like free-response questions. |
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| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Login to Kerberos | You will not be able to view the page without authentication from Kerberos. |
| 2. Navigate to the Team Maker homepage. | You will be presented with a Menu on the left side of your browser window. The only valid options for students is the "Take Survey" command. |
| 3. Click on the "Take Survey" link | A list of surveys you are allowed to take appears in the center of your screen. |
| 4. Click on the appropriate survey | You will be presented with a list of questions to respond to. |
| 5. Respond to questions | Questions either involve clicking one response, multiple responses, or typing a response. Note that you can choose not to answer any question. |
| 6. Click the "Submit Answers" button | Survey responses are saved. Note that you can edit your answers any time before the deadline expires. |
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Login to Kerberos | You will not be able to view the page without authentication from Kerberos. |
| 2. Navigate to the Team Maker homepage. | You will be presented with a Menu on the left side of your browser window. The only valid options for students is the "Take Survey" command. |
| 3. Click on the "Take Survey" link | A list of surveys you are allowed to take appears in the center of your screen. |
| 4. Click on the appropriate survey you wish to modify | You will be presented with a list of questions with your previous answers loaded |
| 5. Modify responses | Questions either involve clicking one response, multiple responses, or typing a response. Note that you can choose not to answer any question. |
| 6. Click the "Submit Answers" button | Survey responses are updated. |
Create a new survey that students can fill out.
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Create Survey" link | You will be presented with a screen asking you for a survey title, who will take the survey, and the deadline for the survey responses. |
| 2. Enter survey name, making sure to use an appropriate title. You want your students to be able to easily identify the survey by the title. | |
| 3. Enter who is eligible to take this survey. | |
| 4. Enter a deadline for the survey. Students can edit their responses as much as they like before this deadline. | |
| 5. Click "Next" to move on. | The software will present you with a new page where you can add questions to the survey. The top of the page contains the info you just entered in the last steps; if you wish to alter any of this information, make the needed changes and hit the "Edit Survey Properties" button. |
| 6. Select a question from the drop-down list and press "Add Question" to add the currently selected question to the survey. | The page will update to represent the fact that the question has been added to the survey. The list of questions in the survey is shown above the "Add Questions" interface. |
| 7. If you want to create a new question or edit a question, please see the appropriate task. | |
| 8. The order of the questions in the survey can be altered by clicking on the "Move Up" or "Move Down" link for any question. | The selected question will change order. |
| 9. When the survey is satisfactory, click the "Finish This Survey" button at the bottom of the page. | Survey completed! |
This feature allows a faculty member to edit an unfinished survey. This feature is intended for use in case creation of a new survey is interrupted.
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Edit Survey" link | A list of surveys you have permission to edit appears. |
| 2. Click on the unfinished survey that you want to edit. | The information for the survey is displayed, exactly as it appears in the "Create Survey" interface. |
| 3. If you want to edit the Survey Title, who is eligible for the survey, or the Survey Deadline, do so and hit the "Edit Survey Properties" button. | The changes will be saved. |
| 4. If you want to remove questions from the survey, click the "Remove" link beside the question. | The question will be removed. |
| 5. If you want to change the order of the questions, click the "Move Up" or "Move Down" links by the question. | The question will be moved in the survey order. |
| 6. If you want to edit a question, click the "Edit" link by the question. | The Edit Question interface will appear. |
| 7. If you want to add a new pre-defined question, use the "Add Question" feature. Highlight the question you want in the pull-down list and click the "Add Question" button. | The new question will be added to the survey. |
| 8. If you want to create a new question for the survey, click the "Create New Question" link under the Add Question interface. | You will be brought to the Create Question interface. |
| 9. Once the survey changes are satisfactory, click the "Finish This Survey" button at the bottom of the page. | The survey changes are saved. |
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Create New Question" link | A new page is displayed showing the Create Question interface. |
| 2. Enter a title for the question in the "Title" dialog. You must not reuse an existing question title, so try to make it specific. This title is ONLY used for the "Add Question" interface; the students will never see it! | |
| 3. Enter a question prompt in the "Prompt" dialog. This is the actual question, in words. | |
| 4. Select the type of question you want by clicking one of the radio buttons. | Multiple Choice - Allows students to select one answer
from a list of responses. Schedule - Displays a schedule interface, where the student can mark off each hour they are available. Text Input (single line) - Allows the student a short (one line) free response in text form. Note that this question has no bearing on the automated team creation algorithm! Text Input (long answer) - Allows the student a length (multiple line) free response in text form. Note that his question has no bearing on the automated team creation algorithm! Choose Any of... - Similar to the Multiple Choice, except it allows the student to pick multiple answers from the predefined list of responses. |
| 5. If the type is "Multiple Choice" or "Choose Any of..." then two or more answers must be provided in the text boxes provided. These are the actual responses to the question that the student will choose from. Please note that a "I choose not to answer" response will be automatically added by the program!! | |
| 6. If you wish to allow other survey creators to use this question in their own surveys, please check the box at the end of the page. | Not checking the box means that only you are capable of using this question. This is ideal for questions that are too specific to be useful for everyone. |
| 7. When you are satisfied with the question, click the "Create Question" button to save it. | You will be returned to the Create Survey/Edit Survey page. The newly created question will appear in the survey. |
Any question that is added to a survey can be modified using the "Edit Question" interface. Note that you can only correct spelling mistakes, not add or remove question responses. It is possible to abuse this functionality to alter the meaning of the responses, but be aware that this makes the data for this question worthless for the algorithm.
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Edit" link by the question in the survey you want to modify. | The "Edit Question" interface appears. At the top is a listing of all the surveys that use this question and therefore are affected by any change to the question. |
| 2. If you wish to change the question's Title, which is only used as a description in the "Add Question" interface, make your changes to the text in the "Title" dialog. | |
| 3. Make any desired changes to the question prompt with the "Prompt" dialog. | |
| 4. If the question is of type "Multiple Choice" or "Choose Any of...," you can alter the responses to choose from in the provided text fields. | |
| 5. If the question is not available to anyone, you can choose to make it so now by checking the box at the bottom of the page named "Make this question available to everyone." | |
| 6. Click the "Submit Changes" button to finalize the change. | You will return to the Create/Edit Survey page, and the chosen question will reflect the modifications. |
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "View Results" link. | A listing of all the surveys you are eligible to look at is displayed. |
| 2. Click on the name of the survey you want to examine. | A page displaying all the usernames of those who responded are shown, with a "Summary" link at the top. |
| 3. To view an individual's responses, click their username. | All their responses are shown. You cannot alter any persons responses. To return to the previous screen, hit your browsers "Back" button. |
| 4. To view a summary of all the responses, click the "Summary" link that is displayed at the top of the list of names. | All the questions in the survey are shown, along with
information about the responses. This information varies depending on the
type of question. Multiple Choice / Choose Any of... - A table is shown with all the responses. The second column shows the raw number that each response received. The third column is the same number as a percentage of the total responses for that question. The fourth column is the percentage in a visual form. Short Answer / Long Answer - All the different responses are shown in the left column. The right column holds the usernames of the people that responded with that particular answer. Schedule - The table of weekly times is displayed, along with a statistical breakdown of how many people chose that particular time. The percentage of how many people chose that hour is displayed in each box, along with the percentage in a color form. A darker color means more people chose that hour, a lighter color means less people. |
| 5. When you are done with viewing the information, choose another function from the menu. |
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Make Teams" link | A page of surveys with expired deadlines is shown. |
| 2. Click on the survey data set that you wish to create teams from. | The team making interface is displayed. At the top of the page the number of people who have responded to the survey is shown. Below that are two fields for the number of teams and team size. The rest of the page is filled with the questions of the survey. |
| 3. Enter the desired number of teams. | The algorithm will divide the class into this exact number of teams. |
| 4. For each question, decide how important it is for people who answered similarly/differently be grouped together. A value all the way to the left will force people who answered similarly into the same groups, while all the way to right will do the opposite. A value in the middle indicates that the response to the question is not important for the formation of the groups. | |
| 5. You can mark one question as a "Diversity Question." | |
| 6. Once you have assigned weights that you think are reasonable, press the "Create Teams" button at the bottom of the page. | This will generate teams based on the weights you have given. This may take a while to compute. Once done, you will be presented with a table of the created teams. |
| 7. To tweak the weights and generate new teams, either use the Back button on your browser or follow the "back" link provided on the page. | You will be taken back to the preceding page (step 3) |
| 8. To view a statistical summary of how each team turned out, click on the team name (i.e. "Team #1") | This statistical summary is identical to the Survey Summary except it only includes the members of the chosen team. When you are done inspecting the team, use the Back button on your browser to return to the summary of the created teams. |
| 9. To view an individuals responses to a survey, click on the persons username. | Use your Back button to return to the team summary. |
| 10. When you are reasonably satisfied with the created teams, you must save them. Enter a name for the generated teams in the provided text box at the bottom at press the "Save Teams" button. | This will save the created teams. These teams can be manually edited later with the Edit Teams function. |
Allows manual editing of teams created by the Make Teams function.
| User Action | Software Reaction |
| 1. Click on the "Edit Teams" link. | A list of all the surveys is given. Under each survey is a list of all saved teams created from the Make Teams function. |
| 2. Locate the set of teams you want to further refine and click on it. | The Edit Teams interface is displayed. A table is provided with all the teams, listing all the members by username. A series of check boxes are next to each student indicating which team they belong to. |
| 3. To move a student, click the radio button corresponding to the team you want to move them to. | There will be no effect until the "Move Members" button is clicked. |
| 4. To update the teams, click the "Move Members" button at the bottom of the page. | This will move the selected students to their new teams. The changes are automatically saved to database. |
| Date | Name | Revision |
| 4/30/2003 | David Aramant | User Manual Created |
| 5/10/2003 | David Aramant | Work progresses |
| 5/11/2003 | David Aramant | Completed to the extent possible given the state of the program. |
| 5/14/2003 | David Aramant | Added Edit Teams |
| 5/15/2003 | David Aramant | Fixes & improvements |