Exam View

Alex WalkerWeb Developer (Learning Technologies)

City of Glasgow College

About the College

• Formed in 2011 when three colleges merged.

• One of Scotland’s biggest colleges.

Glasgow MetropolitanCollege

Central Collegeof Commerce

Glasgow College ofNautical Studies

About the College

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CoursesSta! Accounts

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CoursesSta! Accounts

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CoursesSta! Accounts

Aims of the Project

• Extending the functionality and "exibility of the VLE by letting students see their own results.

• Creating a ‘single point of access’ for students to access their information.

Bene#ts of the Project

• Extending the functionality and "exibility of the VLE.

• Creating a ‘single point of access’ for students to access their information.

• Having live access to data lets students take quick, remedial action.

Bene#ts of the Project

• Encourages sta! to input results into Student Records system promptly.

• Adds value to the VLE, keeps users coming back.

What We Had Before

• Students could contact their lecturer to #nd out their results - lots of admin time for lecturers.

• Printed copies posted to students. Uses lots of paper, takes time to arrive.

The Challenges

• As a funded project, other institutions must be able to use it.

• Di!erent institutions use di!erent student record systems and VLEs.

The Solution

• Build Exam View in a layers.

• Front-ends for various VLEs.

• Back-ends for various student record systems.

• Common ‘language’ so di!erent layers can communicate.

The Solution

Plain HTMLPage

BlackboardFront-End

MoodleBlock

UNITe (Oracle)

MySQLDatabase

WebService

The Solution

The Solution

‘Front End’ Responsibilities

• Integrating into a main system (Moodle, Blackboard etc)

• Knowing which user to request exam results for.

• Displaying exam results to the user.

‘Back End’ Responsibilities

• ‘Speaking to’ the studentrecord system.

• Requesting exam results for agiven user.

• Translating exam results into a format the front-end can understand.

The Solution

Student Presentation Layer Model Layer Data Layer

Request for Exam View page

Page displayed to user

get_student_results(student_id)

results (resultRecord[ ])

Call to database or data API

Unformatted data layer return

process_records

get_student_id

Challenges

• Exam View does require technical skills and liaising with sta! in your institution.

• Many institutions guard their student record system, andrightly so.

Challenges

• Jumping through hoops was required to get access to our student record system.

• An independent UNITe consultant gave us the (big) query to pull data from our UNITe installation.

Challenges

• How powerful is your Student Record system?

• What happens when 5,000 students try to get their exam results at once?

Challenges

• Sta! and students log in to MyCity using their Novell accounts (LDAP).

• User accounts were set to expire the day after a student’s course #nished.

• Students couldn’t log in to get results after their course #nished.

• Communication is key.

Challenges

• Initial plan was to show results in a block in Moodle’s sidebar.

• This space was far too small.

• Created a block that links to a separate results page.

Launching Exam View

• Initially piloted at Glasgow Metropolitan College.

• College used Blackboard as a VLE, but was piloting Moodle with #ve second-year HND courses.

• Installed on the pilot Moodle.

Launching Exam View

Launching Exam View

Launching Exam View

• Asked for feedback during pilot.

• Used online questionnaire.

• Advertised prominently on ExamView’s main results page.

Launching Exam View

Launching Exam View

Launching College-Wide

• In 2011, we launched a new VLE built on Moodle 2, called MyCity.

• Migrated existing materials across and switched o! old VLEs.

• Exam View launched college-wide in early 2012.

How Exam View Evolved

• Our college developed a front-end for UNITe, called Enquirer.

• After the merger, we decided to go through Enquirer rather than through UNITe’s Oracle database.

• We just wrote a new back-end to look at Enquirer. Nothing else changed.

Front-end for Moodle

Front-end for Moodle

Publicising Exam View

• Posted as a news item on MyCity’s homepage.

• Automatically emailed to all lecturers and students.

Publicising Exam View

Publicising Exam View

• There’s nothing magical about the link in ExamView’s block.

• The results page looks at the logged in user, then displays the results.

• You can create a link to /blocks/examview/index.php from anywhere.

Publicising Exam View

Publicising Exam View

• No sta! development required.

• Sta! workfold hadn’t changed: still entering results into the student record system in the same way.

• Sta! aware of Exam View feature through MyCity news posts andall-sta! emails.

Analytics

• Analytics installed on every page of MyCity.

• We monitored the use of Exam View over summer 2012.

Analytics

Month Uses

April 2012 1,157

May 2012 4,137

June 2012 13,699

July 2012 1,612

August 2012 802

Use of ExamView

• A few institutions have launched, or are launching ExamView.

• We’ve been contacted by people in Scotland, England and Algeria.

What’s in the Box?

• A ‘moodle block’ folder, ready to add your chosen back-end to.

• Several sample back-ends that read UNITe’s database, a MySQL database, or a simple PHP array.

• Loads of documentation.

Before Using ExamView

• This isn’t a simple “drag and drop to install” block.

• It requires technical knowledge to connect ExamView to your exam results database.

• Lots of documentation, but moderate development skillsare assumed.

Before Using ExamView

• You’ll need to explain the situation to your MIS people. Get them on board early.

• Make sure your student accounts don’t expire the day their course #nishes.

Installing Exam View

• Exam View is available from our development blog.

newsletters.cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk/examview

• Version 0.91 for Moodle 1.9

• Version 1.01 for Moodle 2.0 - 2.2

Documentation

Using Exam View with Moodle and UNITeIn addition to the Getting Started guide, this is a fast-track guide for getting Exam View working with UNITe and Moodle.

Install the Moodle Block

Rename the ‘moodle_block’ folder to ‘examview’ and copy it to the Block folder of your Moodle installation. To install it, log in to Moodle and go to Administration Notifications. This will get Moodle to recognise the Exam View block.

Creating a Database User for Oracle

UNITe uses an Oracle database, so we’ll be using that to get our data. First, you need to set up a user account that Exam View will use to connect to the database. You should do this using SQL Plus. Documentation is available here. You may need to consult your college’s UNITe administrator to get this done.

You should give your new user account read-only access to the database.

Making Exam View Read from Oracle

In Exam View’s block folder, open frontend-moodle.php. At the top there are two include() lines. Make sure the back-end one reads backend-oracle.php.

Now, open backend-oracle.php. Near the top of the file, you’ll find three variables.

• $oracle_server should contain the address and instance of Oracle you want to connect to you. For example, 10.0.0.7/ULIVE.

• $oracle_username is the username you set up in Oracle for Exam View.• $oracle_password is the password you set up in Oracle for Exam View.

There is another variable called $oracle_query. The supplied query should work with any UNITe installation, provided you have set up the username, password and permissions correctly. You can, of course, change the SQL as necessary.

Exam ViewArchitecture Diagrams

Alex Walker

Version 1.1.024th November 2010

1.0 Initial Version1.0.1 Added optional ‘feedback’ element to Exam Results array in network communication diagram.1.1.0 Updates to Exam View data structure. Applies to software version 0.9.1 and later.

! Exam View System Architecture! Page 1

What’s Next for Exam View

• Refactor code to make it properly object oriented, using an Interface for front-end and back-end.

• Rewrite Moodle block to better use Moodle 2’s theme framework.

• Use a view for UNITe’s Oracle database, rather than the big query.

Questions?

newsletters.cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk/examview