Jon Rowett E-Registers at Brockenhurst College CETIS Enterprise / Pedagogy Joint SIG Meeting, Oct...

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

E-Registers at Brockenhurst College

CETIS Enterprise / Pedagogy Joint SIG Meeting, Oct 2005

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Agenda

• E-Registers – Further Education context

• Two Projects– Emily (internal)– BeRT (JISC funded / open source)

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Further Education

• After the VLE…– Electronic registration: a common next step

• Why not more e-learning?– FE Students do less “independent” learning– Transitioning from school

• Often still need close pastoral support & monitoring• Parental concern

• Funding, funding, funding

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

E-Registers Survey

• Quick, unscientific questionnaire (http://www.freesurveysonline.com/fso/ViewQuestionsResults.fso?QuestionID=48419)

• Sent to various JISC mailing lists• 19 responses

– 16 From FE– 12 already using e-registers– 6 “would pilot them”– 1 had no interest

• Mixture of systems in use– Mainly web, but also:– Optical Mark Recognition– Smart Cards– Desktop software

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Emily

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

What?

• Our First E-Registers project:– To use web registers for all 6th Form lessons– From Sept 2002

• As well as registers:– Attendance reports– Red/amber/green alerts– Contracts– Timetables– Student records / ILPs– Tutor messaging– Integration points

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Why?

• Lack of timely information to support decision making– Weekly paper reports– Could be some time before tutor notices

problem

• Improve Attendance– “Electronic attendance systems have a

positive effect on student attendance” (65%)

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Why?

• Provide a foundation for other applications– MIS “closed to the outside world”– Enable up-to-date student data to be incorporated into

other tools– E.g. Student Progress Reviews

• Because we could!– Idea came from discussions in our technical team– Demos– More demos– Momentum

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

How?

• Project managed by MLE Strategy Group– Principal– SMT– IT– MIS– Academic– E-Learning

• 1 x developer (me)• 1 x designer (www.edmerritt.com)

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Registers…

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Messaging…

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Registers & Messaging

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Parents’ Portal

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Impact

• Real-time data is invaluable to personal tutors• EMA payments and queries take much less time• Messaging turned into a huge feature• New applications

– Text messaging• Great feedback

– “It is a wonderful tool and will be most helpful…thank you again.” (Parent)

– “The college is using, and further developing, a progressive electronic information system to support regular and comprehensive monitoring and assessment of students” (OFSTED)

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Issues

• Strain on IT infrastructure– A PC in every classroom…– 200 Tablet PCs…– Web usage through the roof– Security– Routing of support requests

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Issues

• Application has become a monolith– Unrelated functionality lumped together– Harder to change & maintain

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Brockenhurst E-Registers Toolkit

(BeRT)

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Overview

• A software toolkit for institutions wishing to pilot e-registers

• A toolkit for developers working with attendance systems

• A prototypical interoperability spec?

• Funded by JISC Frameworks & Tools

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Why?

• To share our work with others

• Replace Emily– Make technical improvements– Divide functionality between smaller

components

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

What?

• A functional web registers application– Registers– Reporting– Administration

• A domain model– Mapping the data and interactions– Developing a schema for interoperability

• A service oriented software component

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Domain Modelcd Logical Model

Information Model::RegisterTask

+ SessionInfo: SessionInfo+ MemberOfStaffAssignedTo: StaffInfo+ registerTaskStatus: registerTaskStatus+ DateCreated: DateTime+ DateModified: DateTime+ DateCompleted: DateTime

+ RegisterTask()

Information Model::EnteredMark

+ SessionInfo: SessionInfo+ Student: StudentInfo+ EnteredByStaff: StaffInfo+ EnteredDate: DateTime+ HasHistory: bool

+ EnteredMark()

GroupInfo

Information Model::SessionInfo

+ ClassInfo: ClassInfo+ StartTime: Brockenhurst.Registers.Entities.TimeSpan+ EndTime: Brockenhurst.Registers.Entities.TimeSpan+ Date: System.DateTime+ Location: string+ TeacherForSession: TeacherInfo+ Periods: string[]

+ SessionInfo()

Information Model::MarkDefinition

+ ID: string+ markInterpretation: markInterpretation+ Description: string

+ MarkDefinition()

Request

Information Model::SubmitRegisterRequest

+ RegisterTask: RegisterTask+ EnteredMarks: EnteredMark[]

+ SubmitRegisterRequest()

+SessionInfo

+SessionInfo

+RegisterTask

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Service Oriented

• JISC E-Learning Programme

• Interoperable software components (and people) collaborate via messaging to complete a business process

• BeRT Web Services can form one component in a service-oriented MLE

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

BeRT Availability

• JISC / CETIS Conference (Edinburgh, Nov 14th)

• http://www.brock.ac.uk/bert

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/bert

Jon Rowett <jrowett@brock.ac.uk>

Why Enterprise?

• The IMS Enterprise (+Web Services) spec– Useful when moving around data about

students, classes, teachers and timetables

• It’s about system integration to support learning