Our group now has additional personnel ready to support you in making your course materials accessible. If you will be assigning readings next quarter in the form of PDFs, and you are interested in making those PDFs accessible to students who use assistive technologies like screen readers, our group can help! Note that some PDFs have accessible, full-text HTML versions via our library; however, scanned chapters, or PDFs of articles without an available full-text version online, need to be remediated in order to be screen-readable. If you are interested in this service, please email edhelp@uw.edu with your request! Due to the detailed nature of remediation, the turnaround time is usually several weeks, but we are happy to get started early on Spring quarter course materials.
News
UW-IT Piloting Hypothes.is Social Annotation Tool
Social annotation tools allow students to take notes in the margins of digital texts, read and add on to their peers’ notes, and respond to discussion questions in context. Hypothes.is (https://web.hypothes.is/education/) is one of the leading social annotation platforms, and UW-IT is partnering with them to offer a pilot of the Hypothes.is Canvas integration (https://web.hypothes.is/help/using-the-hypothesis-app-with-assignments-in-canvas/) through the end of the 20-21 academic year. The pilot enables you and your students to use Hypothes.is integrated with your Canvas course and assignments. To learn more about using Hypothes.is in your course, join UW-IT for a webinar Thursday, Feb 18th from 3:30 – 4:30PM to learn about the basics of the integration with Canvas, experience annotating, and ask questions. Register for the webinar to reserve your spot.
Qualtrics Reports: Save your “Classic Report” before March 31st
If you are a Qualtrics user and you are using old reports in your project, you should check if they were built using the “Classic” version of the Report builder. This older version of the tool will be turn off on March 31st.
If you don’t know if you have any “Classic Report”, you will need to open the [Reports] tab, and then the [Reports] section. You may see a different screen depending on your previous use of Reports for the project you are looking at (the links will take you to a short demo):
- No previous use of Advanced Reports: You will see a prompt saying “There are no reports for this project”. Click the “View Classic Reports” button. A new tab will open and you will need to close the alert message announcing Classic Reports will be removed. After that, you can Select the “All” tab, and see if you have any Classic report you wish to save either as a printout or as a QRF file (to re-create as an Advanced Report).
- Previously used Advanced Reports: You will see the report you are currently using, and if you click on the leftmost menu item (Report _Report Name_ (Details)), then select the bottom choice> “View Classic Reports”. A new tab will open and you will need to close the alert message announcing Classic Reports will be removed. After that, you can Select the “All” tab, and see if you have any Classic report you wish to save either as a printout or as a QRF file (to re-create as an Advanced Report).
Please contact us if you need any help during this process
Cycle 125
1/25/2021 – 2/5/2021
Work Complete
Budgets
- (Complete) In new Faculty Effort feature, update language and help messages based on feedback from fiscal team. This feature is under review by the wider team in preparation for release.
OnCourse
(15% Complete) OnCourse is an in-development project to substantially upgrade our college’s Courses Database. OnCourse will provide a more modern interface, better optimized for the work you do, with an improved data model that will address many long-term limitations of Courses.
- Change Wildcard Titles to Course Variants. This provides largely the same function, but instead of replacing course titles with the Wildcard version, Variants will be presented as extra fields, e.g. subtitles.
- Added Joint section groups. This data model will allow us to display groups of joint sections as a single record and still let users to drill into a single specific section when they need to. This will support reviewing enrollment at the joint group level and adding enrollment threshold notifications to the group.
- “Instructors” instead of “Staff”. Courses uses a single record type to add both Instructor of record (goes into Time Schedule) and support staff (TA, Reader/Grader). This created complicated forms and awkwardly worded labels. In OnCourse Instructors are a set of records and Support Staff is a separate record type. Software labels match real world terminology and both record types lose irrelevant fields, simplifying the user interface.
- Update initial migration process for data model changes. When we launch OnCourse it will contain all of the plans and history available in the current Courses database. Every change we make to OnCourse model requires a migration strategy to get the existing Courses records in the new place in the new system.
- Load data in nightly batch process from UW Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) > SDB. This bulk strategy massively improves system update times. The bulk update that takes 5-20 minutes to run in Courses completes in under 30 seconds.
- Load data for a single record from the UW Student Web Service (SWS). This will allow a user in OnCourse who is comparing our plan to UW Time Schedule data to click a button and get fresh UWTS info immediately. Build a debug web view of the SWS course section record.
- Build mapping system that translates EDW course data and SWS course data to the same representation. SWS has translated many fields into pretty, readable values. But we require a single representation in OnCourse that can be updated from either UW source.
Infrastructure
Prototype an app using InertiaJS. Our college database are largely server-side rendered applications. These are quicker to develop and easier to support, but they can lack the speed and elegance of modern client-side rendered JavaScript applications. To date, we enhance our applications by adding JavaScript widgets to specific pages, while still operating server-side oriented applications.
InertiaJS is a new library that serves as an adapter between a modern client-side application and a classic server-side application. This allows the server-side application to change very little and maintain control over complex issues like routing and authorization.
We have started a small prototype application to verify that this will work in the UW / COE technical environment, understand how development will change, and see what kind of user experience improvements we can achieve. If these results are promising, we will consider InertiaJS for future projects.
Cycle 124
1/11/2021 – 1/22/2021
Work Complete
NARF
- (Complete) Add a Cancel link to each step in the request creation process. This allows a user to easily cancel their request at any point.
- (Complete) Add request count in badges on the home page jump navigation. The count shows the number of requests listed in the relevant section further down the page. The jump navigation shows when the current user has 3 or more sections visible on the home page.
- (Complete) Add prompt for Sexual Misconduct Declaration form. Requester is required to enter the date this form was sent when requesting New Employee or Rehire for Student employees.
- (Complete) Add report of Top Submitters. This report give HR/P team overview of activity in the system.
Person
- (Complete) Update central Person Authorization logging so that all college database report user authorization changes centrally. This central view supports administration of the >1,000 users in our college databases.
Student
- (Complete) Import Institution (schools) data from WA State OSPI.
- (Complete) Import WA Public Schools employee data from WA State OSPI. These records are imported as Career records when they match our students.
Infrastructure
- (Complete) Implement a Test Environment warning consistently across all college databases. These warnings appear when a user visits a college database application on our Development or Staging servers. Initial warning in pop-up modal. That modal can be dismissed for the user’s session. Even after the modal is dismissed a red Test Environment flag sticks at the top left of the window.
Cycle 123
12/14/2020 – 1/8/2021
Work Complete
Applicant Review
- (Fixed) Basic Skills test scores were being displayed twice if an applicant had multiple applications with expected certifications.
- (Complete) Add Submitted date to the Application Incomplete report table view.
- (Complete) User may delete their own Rubric Score up to the point they mark it complete.
- (Complete) Revised the Rubric build tool so the edit field for evaluation ratings is a reasonable size for the content. Previously when you clicked to edit a rating a tiny text area field was provided.
- (Complete) Strip illegal operating system characters from attachment filenames. It was possible for applicants and recommenders to include characters in attachment filenames that could not be used when a review tried to download the file to their local Windows or Mac computer (e.g. /\:). If those characters appear, we replace them with an _ underscore before providing a download.
- (Complete) Activate IR Coding tool. This allows the Institutional Research office to add hand coded fields for application reporting. Made several improvements to streamline the hand-coding process.
Courses
- (Complete) Add Room Preference Status report. This shows all the offerings for a particular quarter where the instructor has not yet entered their Room Preferences. This report helps Curriculum Coordinator send follow up emails to a targeted list.
- (Complete) Automatically create and assign Wildcard Titles for courses that historically had different names. This was a long term need, but became immediately urgent for the major revision to curriculum for Measurement & Statistics.
- (Complete) Deploy OnCourse to production, start automated nightly updates. OnCourse is next major version of the Courses database, still in early development. To provide better historical Course information in our existing Courses database we are using the data from OnCourse. Separate Courses database nightly update of curriculum data from UW Student Web Service. Update from OnCourse.
NARF
- (90% Complete) Several updates are pending user acceptance in NARF including cancel links during creation, request counts on section nav links, date sent field for the new sexual misconduct form, and a top submitter report. Details will follow on release.
Person
- (Complete) Show supervisor for positions in the Person database. Import this information with Person nightly updates from the EDW. Person database is used to manage college database authorizations and supervisor helps understand who users are and who to contact with questions.
Placements
- (Complete) Made several improvements to the Institution record editing tools to allow IR Office to maintain this data and support PESB reporting. Identify institutions as WA Public Schools, this impacts what records get reported and what properties must be research (e.g. OSPI Building Code). Allow selection of WA School District. Allow delete and merge of institution records.
- (Complete) Provide a button that copies all of the certification requirements and test score evidence configuration from the “First Issue” certificate type to the “Emergency” certificate type.
- (Complete) The mentor search tool searches email field as well as name.
Infrastructure
- (Complete) Upgrade JavaScript build tooling for all (8) college database projects. One of our core build tools (laravel-mix) has moved to a new major version that has a different interface for major libraries. We have updated all college database projects to use the same library versions and setup routines.
- (Complete) Prune old and backup tables. In data model migrations we sometimes leave copies of old data in case anything goes wrong. We’ve gone through and cleaned out this old, now redundant, data.
Cycle 122
11/30/2020 – 12/11/2020
Work Complete
Add Codes
- (Complete) Launched new Add Codes form that gathers structured input from students requesting to enroll in COE practicum and internship sections. This system prompts the student for details based on course and initiates an email to edcodes@uw.edu. (Replaces legacy “Practicum” form.)
Applicant Review
- (Complete) Internal Graduate Applications allows Student Services to create new application records visible to reviewers. We use these for current students who are continuing to additional degree programs or changing major.
- (Fixed) When changing the report parameter for Period (e.g. Year and Quarter) the modified adjusted parameters are no longer displayed twice.
- (Complete) When sending email using a template that includes Advisor name, applicants that don’t have an advisor assigned cannot be selected as recipients.
- (Complete) Remove MyGrad ProgID (Application Profile identifier) from structural data model. We still track what MyGrad application profile an applicant used, but this is an optional annotation to the application record. This change allows us to better support purely internal applications.
Student
- (Complete) Revised student milestones for ECFS program.
Test Scores
- (Complete) Added a Match All maintenance routine. Test Score system regularly searches for matching student and applications for test scores imported in recent months. This version of the routine search all unmatched test scores in the system, useful especially during Teacher Education application cycles.
TREQ – Travel & Requisitions
- (Complete) In print view task title is always displayed. (Previously completed tasks just showed type of task, who completed it, and when.)
- (Complete) In Pending Task report the title of the pending task is used as the overall status of the order. This provides more specific explanation of order status at the list view. We made this change to better support tracking “Confirm Receipt” tasks.
In Development
Axiom
(50% complete) We are building automated data feeds to support the fiscal team’s budgeting tool: Axiom. Daily extract was updated to include Starting Balance amount for relevant budgets.
Faculty Effort Report
(80% complete) This tool will facilitate generation and approval of faculty pay allocations outside of home budgets. Recent work includes tools to manage the faculty list, adding inline help, and refining the user interface.
Cycle 121
11/9/2020 – 11/24/2020
Work Complete
Applicant Review
- (Fixed) Resolved a bug that happened when an Apply Portal application step was both an alias and an archived step. The Apply Portal configuration tries to simplify or hide old configuration options to make configuring new cycles easier.
- (Complete) Created a program list (identified by UW Major Abbreviation + Pathway Code) and moved the Grad School ProgID (which correlates with program but actually describes what application profile an applicant filled out) to its own record. This cleans up denormalized data and prepares for future requirement: create internal applications.
Courses
- (Complete) Added Modality field to Courses, replacing Asynchronous. This field describes the delivery strategy for a course section. We remodeled this field because 1. it represents both synchronous / asynchronous but also remote / in-person, 2. UW has provided official definitions to be used in UW Time Schedule, 3. to represent when we still need response from instructor.
- (Complete) Editing an instructor’s name now updates all the course sections where that person is instructor. To provide the simple instructor listing in tables views (example “Jane Doe +2”) the multiple instructors model is processes and an instructor short description is created per course section. These instructor short descriptions need to be regenerated when a name is changed.
Test Score
- (Complete) Reworked test score matching tool to make it more readable. Search tool is highlighted. Test score person data is presented in alignment with same fields from COE applicant/student data. Removed the SSN partial fields which are sensitive data and not used in the person matching logic.
- (Fixed) Process that matches “recently” added test score to person records was using the wrong comparison and trying to match old records instead of recent records.
Student
- (Fixed) Placements download CSV spreadsheet was not working.
In Development
Axiom
(50% complete) We are building automated data feeds to support the fiscal team’s budgeting tool: Axiom. Using a daily schedule job, our system extracts relevant records from the UW Enterprise Data Warehouse and transforms it to the representation required by Axiom, including adding custom organizational structure. This generates daily data files that are collected and loaded by Axiom.
Faculty Effort Report
(80% complete) This tool will facilitate generation and approval of faculty pay allocations outside of home budgets. Recent work includes email notifications for approvals and a toggle view that allows user to see just the exceptional allocations or switch to a view that includes distributions to home budget.
Cycle 120
10/19/2020 – 11/6/2020
Work Complete
Applicant Review
- (Complete) Add check for Advisor field when sending applicant emails. During the send email process, if you choose applicants that have no Advisor assigned, email templates that have Advisor mail merge fields will be disabled options.
NARF
- (Complete) Add checkbox where HR/Payroll team can indicate an Appointment Letter was not needed for this position. Change all Appointment types to include Letter step in workflow, HR/Payroll team will specifically review and indicate where Letter step was not required.
Student
- (Fixed) Student search works for students with spaces in their first or last name. Previously you could not search by the second word.
- (Complete) Report for ECO that shows students who have not been assigned to any ECO Internships cohort group. This report is linked on the Cohorts page in the ECO section.
- (Complete) Manually created Group index. Cohorts index page now has a second section that links to manually created groups not associated with a program cohort.
- (Complete) Manually created Groups can be associated with a program cohort. For example you can make a Group manually and edit it to show up under the ECO section on the Cohorts page.
- (Complete) Add test scores from SDB within Certification tools. Button searches UW official data for ACT/SAT test scores and imports into the local college database.
- (Complete) Update the student placement record and form for Educational Psychologist internships. Add a field for “Indirect Contact Hours”. This field is only used for EDPSY placements.
- (Complete) Add ability to return user to the student detail page scrolled to a specific section with that section expanded. This should provide a better user experience when editing records like Placements and Certification.
- (Complete) Add form for creating and editing Career records in Student database. This record used to be a type of Placement record, but has been separated into its own record type.
TREQ
- (Fixed) Search that returns an Order that is not yet submitted was breaking the search results view. This is fixed.
- (Fixed) In the Items tool, the pencil icon next to amount was a dead link. This is fixed and clicking any of the pencil icons opens the Item edit tool with the clicked field active.
Infrastructure
- (Complete) Convert the user testing and support feature (whoami) in the EDUC database to work consistently with other college databases.
- (Complete) Move all college database source code repositories to a College of Education shared repository. This makes projects easier to browse and simplifies user management. It involved moving repositories, updating deployment system, and updating cross project references.
- (Complete) Upgrade all projects to Laravel 8 and its related dependency versions.
Cycle 119
Work Complete
Applicant Review
- (Complete) De-emphasize Red Flag block on application detail page. We want the Red Flag widget to be a highlighted piece of information reviewers are kept aware of, but we don’t want it to look like an automatic Deny decision.
- (Complete) Show Recommender’s organization on application detail page. This missing field was added under a recommender’s name, next to their title.
Budgets Effort
- (60% Complete) Added tooling for assigning fiscal manager per faculty and assigning faculty a default or home budget. Refine report to visually separate each distinct distribution date range.
Courses
- (Complete) Allow more flexibility entering time values in Meeting form. Page will now parse, validate, and format a time value using sensible defaults when the user leaves the field. For example entering “9” will be parsed and formatted as “9:00 AM”.
- (Complete) Removed “Windows” as a room preference option. This room preference was added by mistake, there is no matching request in the UW central room scheduling system.
- (Complete) Provide a report of instructors in a quarter that have not yet submitted room preferences.
Test Scores
- (Complete) Add ACT / SAT test scores as group of Math, Reading, Writing scores. Scores share a test date. For each score select the correct assessment coding. This also required labeling assessment types with their Basic Skills category, added this field and built UI to edit it.