Section Picker

From skylightwiki

Contents 1 Introduction to Section Picker 1.1 How do I logon? 1.2 The basic steps (I'm in a hurry) 2 Conceptual Overview 3 Crosslisted/Conjoint courses 3.1 Picking 3.2 Naming 4 WHETS or other linked sections 4.1 Picking/Merging 4.1.1 Picking/Merging (how it affects Skylight surveys) 4.2 Naming 5 Instructor Name 5.1 How it's used 5.2 Managing missing instructor names 5.2.1 Managing in Section Picker 5.2.2 Managing missing names in Skylight 6 CHECK YOUR WORK! 7 Adding More sections to a survey (I didn't pick all I needed) 8 Gotchas 8.1 Picking the same section more than once

Introduction to Section Picker

SECTION PICKER is a WSU-only resource. 
It is not a part of the Skylight Application
It is a utility that prepares course section data for upload to create Respondent Pools

Section Picker is a self service means to create a list of sections for Authorization by Enrollment (ABE) surveys, see Conceptual Overview, below. The Data Source is WSU Data Warehouse, which includes information on cross-listed and conjoint sections, but not on other co-instructional arrangements such as courses offered on multiple campuses and linked by telecommunications.

How do I logon?

Access the application here: https://apps.ctlt.wsu.edu/SectionPicker

• Logon with your WSU Active Directory (AD) credentials (Network ID).
• If this your first time logging in to the Picker, it will create a local account for you automatically

The basic steps (I'm in a hurry)

A. Click on "Create new cart"

The steps below are demonstrated in this video tutorial.

1. Type in a descriptive name (e.g. year term and department (2008 Spring Chemistry) ) and click the Create button.
2. You should now see a new row with your new cart displayed. Click on the cart name (its a link) in the row to open it.
3. Use the search filter in the left pane under "Search WSU Courses" to find courses that match your criteria.
4. In the search results, select the check boxes next to the courses you want to pick, and click the Add button.
   

• After adding, the picked courses will display in the right called "Shopping Cart View", and will be available the next time you access your cart.
• Continue to use the search filter and add more courses

B. Copy the cart key (short video demo of this step

1. On the home page (click Home at the top of page if not already there), you will see a Cart Key associated with your cart in a format similar to: 21afbw16-e87a-1ac2-9d76-c176d27bd7ef
2. Select and copy the cart key

C. Import cart into Skylight

1. In Skylight, navigate to the Respondent Pool Page
2. Click on the 'Section Picker' button
3. Paste in your cart key (GUID) in the text box
4. Set the Delivery Type to "Single URL + AD Auth + AD Group"
5. If desired, you can add meta data (which be applied to all imported courses). This is optional and can be skipped.
6. Click the Import button.
7. Navigate back to the Respondent Pool List to view the imported courses.

Conceptual Overview

The Section Picker metaphor is a "shopping cart" called "cart" in the application. Course sections are placed into the cart. The "buying" process in the metaphor is uploading a cart into Skylight to create respondent pools for a survey.

Section Picker is intended to be used self-service by survey managers, most likely department or College administrative staff to prepare a course evaluation survey.

Crosslisted/Conjoint courses

• What is a crosslisted course?
  • One or more linked sections often taught in the same place, that have the same instructor but have a different course prefix.
  • Example: BIOL 301 sec. 01 is crosslisted with MBIOS 301 sec. 01.
• What is a conjoint course?
  • One or more linked sections often taught in the same place, that have the same instructor but have a different course number.
  • Example: BIOL 438 sec. 01 is conjoint with BIOL 538 sec. 01.
• Are their other types of these linked courses?

• There are several other cases, an example is WHETS courses which are linked but taught on different campuses by the same instructor.
• In online learning environments, the instructor may have elected to group several sections into one course space, e.g., Econ 101 sections 01,03,04 and 06 might be online and taught as a single "super section" by the instructor.
• Usually the courses are taught by the same instructor but the campus, prefix, course number, and etc. can change between the sections.

Picking

When picking courses to add to your cart, SectionPicker checks data supplied from the University Catalog to see if a section is cross-listed or conjoint. The data does not have information about the other kinds of linkages described above.

SectionPicker assumes that if you pick one section of a cross-listed or conjoint course, you want all the linked sections to be in the same group and adds them automatically.

Naming

The default name is the "7-way key" captured from Active Directory which is the data source: The 7-way key structure is: Year_Term_Campus_Prefix_Number_Section_LabFlag. Courses in your Shopping Cart View can be renamed at will. Clicking on the group name will allow you to type in any desired name. Section names from Section Picker will pass to Skylight to become Respondent Pool names.

In the case of cross-listed or conjoint courses, the default name is the 7-way key that was picked. The name is not modified to reflect the linkages.

WHETS or other linked sections

Picking/Merging

• It is important to know when merging groups is beneficial. A common case is when you want to bundle several sections together to appear as one course, so that it can be surveyed as a single section. However, if multiple courses are grouped, they cannot be ungrouped. You must delete the custom group and re-add the individual sections if there is a mistake.

Picking/Merging (how it affects Skylight surveys)

• Grouping will affect the authorized courses in a Respondent Pool in Skylight
• If multiple sections are merged, they will appear as one Respondent Pool, and surveyed as one course. The response data will all be merged into one respondent pool, and there will be no way to split out individual section responses.

Naming

In the case of hand-made linkages, for example WHETS courses, it may be desirable to modify the section name to change the campus to read WHETS, to help with recognizing the course later.

Instructor Name

How it's used

Instructor names (and WSU Network IDs) are loaded from Active Directory when a course section is added into your cart. These names are listed in green for each section. Many sections have multiple instructors associated with them.

Instructor data will be loaded into Skylight (as metadata on the Respondent Pool) and as authorization to view the section in Skylight Dashboard when the Section Picker cart is imported.

Managing missing instructor names

Managing in Section Picker

Instructor names can be added on the fly in the Section Picker by clicking on a group name in the Shopping Cart View. A WSU NID or WSU Friend ID can be added to (or removed from) the instructor list.

Any changes made to instructors inside Section Picker are saved inside the Section Picker application only -- Nothing is updated in the central AD database. To manage the central data source, use RONet and change the Teaching Assignments.

Managing missing names in Skylight

Respondent Pool Metadata Instructor names are store as metadata here. If you are using instructor metadata to be displayed in the survey taking experience by using metadata tagging, it is important for all respondent pools to contain something and not be left blank for the specific metadata your are using. By default, if there is no instructor info when a user imports from Section Picker into Skylight, Section Picker import populates "STAFF" as the instructor name metadata to fill blank values.

If this is ignored or left blank anyway, it could cause error messages in the survey delivery to display if metadata tags are used to dynamically insert data into the survey.

Respondent Pool Managers In addition to the instructor name being loaded as metadata, the instructor NID (or FID if RONet allows it) is loaded into the authorization data for the respondent pool. This will enable the instructor to see the pool in Skylight Dashboard and have some limited control over it.

If it is necessary to modify the instructor authorization in Skylight, look for a key icon on the extreme right of the respondent pool manager list of respondent pools. At present (March 08) there are no tools for mass editing of respondent pool managers.

At present (March 08) the control the instructor has over the pool cannot be edited during the upload process, nor can it be edited in Skylight.

Review description. Please review this description against the application.

CHECK YOUR WORK!

There are two ways to check your work in Section Picker.

1. Use the "Print" option in the upper right while you are working on your cart. You can sort the list a couple ways with the sort tool and then either review onscreen or on paper.
2. Upload (see above) into Skylight and then either:

1. export what you just uploaded. If you edit this report, it is possible to re-upload if you first delete the original respondent pools.
2. Get a full Excel report which also has respondent pool information. If you edit this report, it cannot be uploaded to make changes in respondent pools.

Adding More sections to a survey (I didn't pick all I needed)

• Modify an existing cart to add more sections so they all get stored together. This makes it easier to import into Skylight later.
• Creating a new cart is not necessary unless you want to store a completely separate course list.
• You can add (or remove) sections to your cart at any time. All cart changes are saved each time you make changes.

Gotchas

Picking the same section more than once

Section Picker prevents picking the same section more than once into ONE cart, but since Skylight allows multiple carts to be uploaded into one survey, it is possible to multiply pick a section. This is undesirable because the students in the section will get multiple surveys.

This problem most likely happens in a case where several people are picking sections for the same survey in an effort to delegate responsibility to those with the best information. The example case would be a cross-listed course that was picked by each of its prefixes into different carts and then the carts were uploaded to the same survey. The recommended procedure to allow collaboration without this collision is to work in one cart -- which will notify the picker when a duplicate section is picked.