SC Web Content Steering Proposal

From Education

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Justification and Background

The SC Steering Committee has requested that we operate in a manner that scales effectively and has also been asking recently for more concrete examples of the curriculum development that occurs at workshops. Our initial efforts on the wiki and the website begin as support for us as a committee. However, as the program grows, potentially more people may using the website, wiki, and moodle as end users than the committee members and organizers the web content was initially designed to support. Further, workshop and SC program attendees tend to be less comfortable using these kinds of technology and are less used to needing to remember multiple passwords and complicated path traversals than people already closely involved with high performance computing (ie the instructors and committee).

Currently, workshop attendees may need to check multiple areas of the web content to find all of the information pertinent for their attendance at a workshop. This is due in part to the unclear roles of the online resources and overlapping in the roles.

The plan below outlines a number of steps for reordering the web content in a more organized and effective fashion for participants in the SC Education Program, while tucking the organizer and committee member content behind the scenes. In addition, it also describes how instructors will use the new web infrastructure in order to make summer workshop materials available in an organized and permanent manner for the workshop attendees.

Current Resources

The SC Education web server houses a number of online resources:

The first moodle (http://moodle.sc-education.org) was installed by instructor request. Previously, workshop instructors had been using the SC Education wiki as a place to store and develop course materials. Instructors new to the pathways team had expressed a strong interest in using a tool they were already familiar with rather than learning a new one. As outlined in this plan, the moodle has the potential to serve as a excellent permanent storage facility for workshop course content.

At the Curriculum Development Workshop at Louisiana State University, participants expressed an interest in being able to create a moodle account and use it freely as a sandbox for learning about this particular course management tool, and so the instructors allowed them to create accounts. Even with just one workshop's number of people, this quickly congested the first page of the moodle, and so Kay created a second moodle instance from a copy of the other one's database and moved all attendee efforts into the second moodle (http://moodle.sc-education.org/sandbox). This also allowed the default roles on the official moodle to be locked down significantly while still allowing workshop participants to create accounts and create courses without needing manual role approval from the moodle admin on the second moodle.

Resource Roles: Current and Future Definitions

Wiki

Currently the wiki serves multiple roles: a place for workshop attendees to organize their notes and projects, a place to organize workshop information for the coordinators, a collaborative space for curriculum development, and a curriculum repository. In addition, it has also been used (in the past) as a place for workshop or SC program attendees to refer to for information about current events.

We propose that two of these roles be moved to other resources in order to more clearly delineate their purposes. The official SC Education moodle will be used to contain the course content as presented by the instructors for each particular workshop. The website will be used for official information dispersal, such as SC08 event logistics.

The wiki will continue to serve two distinct roles. In broader terms, the wiki will provide 1) space for participants to learn about wikis and develop their materials during workshops and 2) space for organization/collaboration by the instructors, steering committee, and support staff.

By using the wiki to develop official information but then publishing it on the website, material can be edited and approved in a collaborative fashion and then published on the website when finished. This creates a distinction between developing versus finished information, a parallel to the developing versus “laminated” workshop curriculum theme. This allows the general public to see the polished result without the needing to know the details that went into its development, an important part of bringing SC Education up from a grass roots effort reinvented every year to a well-oiled, continuing entity.

Website

As previously mentioned, under this proposal the website will continue to be a repository of information for workshop and program participants. It will continue to house all of its current content, including the awards and student competition submission systems. Recently, requests for more visibility of critical items (CSERD, ???? Publisher) have gone unmet because the current front page does not support these types of additions. Frankly, the current web front page is bursting at the seams with too much information in an overwhelming manner.

Moodle

The initial moodle install did not have a clear role defined as part of its inception. However, it was quickly rolled up into the “content lamination” system explained further later in this proposal. In order to keep this resource from being publicly modified, the permissions are tight and new accounts need to be promoted to a level where they can upload and modify content.

The second moodle, the “sandbox” has permissions set more open than an initial install. By default, after e-mail validation, new accounts can create new courses (though they cannot modify others' courses). One teacher has express interest in using her moodle course with her classroom; if this becomes the case, we may need to move to a system where individuals need to be given express permission to create courses. At this time, however, the moodle instance serves only as an area for individuals new to moodle to learn about its features by trying their hand at using it.

Drupal

Currently the Drupal instance serves no clear purpose, nor is it being utilized. As such we propose that the site be taken down until such time as an interest is expressed in using it.

Proposal

The proposal outlined below contains multiple steps for moving SC Education towards an coherent web presence whose individual components have clearly (and publicly) defined roles, as well as angling the current resources towards becoming more user friendly.

Phase I: Curriculum Lamination

Fitting with the roles discussed above, the wiki will continue to be used by workshop instructors to develop course content. However, the moodle will be used as a repository for this content, allowing workshop participants to return to the particular materials they used at a particular workshop instance even if the curriculum used by the instructors may have changed in the meantime.

This creates a need for workshop instructors to move content from the wiki to the moodle. Kay is currently working on a project to be completed by late June or early July to add a new tab for users logged into the wiki that would allow them to “laminate” the current page into the SC workshop moodle. This lamination would take the current content and copy it to a more permanent form that would automatically be placed in the moodle (specifically in the course and section chosen by the person doing the laminating).

This would support a request we've heard from many workshop participants, that they have a stable URL/content that they can go back to after the workshop to retrieve content that was presented during the workshop. The Moodle enables us to organize materials by workshop, day, presenter, etc., that is in a natural both to the flow of the workshop and to how participants use the information.

The Moodle would contain links on the front page to the wiki space for that workshop and any other related materials making it the one-stop place for workshop participants to find materials.

Phase II: Wiki Restructuring

Using the wiki for two distinct roles means that a clear distinction between to the two must be evident to those using it. Currently the front page has been restructured to move the previous information to separate pages deeper in the wiki while creating links to each one of the workshops given this summer. This distinction could be further enhanced by creating private and public content on the wiki.

In order to make the wiki serve the two clearly distinct roles outlined above (uses for workshop attendees and for organizers/instructors), the current display of information on the wiki needs to be carefully revised. As a temporary fix, Kay took down the old content and linked to it at the top of the page and then added links to the individual summer workshops for this year down below. This made the LSU curriculum page easier for the workshop attendees to find as they learned how to use the wiki and created their own content on ours.

Depending on how hidden the committee would like internal information, it would be possible to move the existing organizational/committee content to a new namespace (at least the beginning pages for each of the sections). Each page would need to be prefixed with the namespace id. For instance, for the namespace “SC”, the page “Curriculum” would be moved to “SC: Curriculum”. Then only users logged in and part of the SC Education committee, instructor, and organizer pool would be able to view and edit these pages.

Users accessing these internal pages would receive an error along the lines of, “This internal page is protected. Please make sure you are logged in in order to access this page. If you are already logged in and believe you should have access, please e-mail the webmaster at webmaster@sc-education.org”. This custom error message and namespace are already in place, but changing the status of wiki accounts and moving the current internal pages to a new namespace has not yet been started.

The internal content will also be organized into one of several different sections – Pathways, Curriculum Development, Workshop Planning, SC08 Planning, Collaboration, etc. As an alternative to moving each one of the existing internal pages to the new namespace, just the pages linking to content in area one of these areas could be moved (which then also protects it from any users without SC status).

While obscuring this information from attendees by tucking it further into the wiki, the information could also be made more easily accessible to committee members (regardless of whether the full contents or just the “beginning” pages join the protected namespace). Kay previously developed a navigation bar at the top of each wiki page for the MediaWiki installation at http://cidays.org/ and this code could easily be copied over. Then links to individual summer workshops could be on the left sidebar and links to internal pages on the top bar.

Phase III: Web Front Page Restructuring

The front page of the website's current design was based on the old SC website's design. Since then, the designers for SC have revised that front page.

As SC Education has many online resources, it makes sense to have one central spot for participants to access the other resources from. That way they need only remember one URL and can link from the main website to the other resources (including www.computationalscience.org, the moodle, and the wiki). If the website is to serve this purpose, the resources need to be more clearly delineated on the page. The existing Current Events section needs to remain in some fashion in order to make announcements but in its current form, the entire page is about current events and so adding new ones in a meaningful way is difficult.

We propose having large links with an artistic flair in order to easily route users through the SC resources. These links would include

  • CSERD: Curriculum
  • Wiki: Development
  • Moodle: Workshop Content
  • Edu-grid: HPC Resources
  • NCSI: Registration and Surveys

We also propose that a smaller section be dedicated below these for important application internal links, including

  • Apply for Verona, Panoff, and UCES Awards
  • Apply for the SC Education Program
  • Apply for an SC Summer Workshop
  • Apply for the SC Student Competition

It is our hope that giving these resources a more important place on the front page will also encourage individuals new to the SC Education program to stumble upon them. The current front page gives too much information to be easily digestible in a few seconds by someone new to the site.

Phase IV: Single Sign On (Part One)

After having completed aesthetics and reducing friction for workshop instructors to publish content in the first three phases, we propose moving onto reducing friction for workshop attendees when using the SC website resources by beginning to implement a single signon in the background. Initially, this would mean adding users to an LDAP database (potentially on the SC Education server but more likely on the elwood.edu-grid.org server – see below) and then having the wiki and sandbox moodle authenticate off LDAP.

Hooking the wiki and moodle together off LDAP will help give the edu-grid administrators an idea of what will be involved in linking LDAP between the two institutions.

Phase V: Single Sign On (Part Two)

After successfully linking in the wiki and moodle to the LDAP database, the next step would be beginning to hook the two primary institutions in Edu-grid together. Edu-grid will be used to provide HPC resources to workshop attendees (and others) in the SC Education program, and as such, a single signon allowing access to Edu-grid resources as well (primarily WebMO at this point and possibly shell access for certain workshops) would further polish SC Education's appearance as a single entity.

Being able to monitor which users continue to access resources after (based on a name and rather than an anonymous number) will allow SC Education to better track users' post-workshop and post-program needs.

Phase VI: Single Sign On (Part Three)

Ultimately, this same system could be hooked in with NCSI's user database. At this point, NCSI user passwords are stored in clear text. If given access to the NCSI database, hooking new users into the SC Education LDAP database could be as simple as creating a new account based on the user's NCSI username and password whenever a new user registers.

Notes from June 19, 2008 Call

Publish Button

  • Now available, Paul and Charlie should try it and generate feedback.
  • Ability to publish "locally" rather than to a workshop for a stand-alone content.
  • Ability to remove from the Moodle.
  • Option to overwrite previously published content.
  • Ability to preview the content to be published before accepting it.
  • Math support (it might already - ?? need to check)
  • Eventually pull from Shodor's database or ours somewhere and have new workshop be created when added to registration system
  • SC branding - top and/or footer
  • Meta-data support, collect and publish on Moodle with the content:
    • Author
    • Educational level
    • Description
    • Check CSERD requirements

Moodle

  • PDF viewer in-line ala Safari.
  • Ability to remove content.

SSO

  • What happens when Valerie is gone for a week, and other Shodor integration issues.
  • How would someone change their password? How many different mechanisms would we support?
  • How is revocation done? How is it propagated?
  • Notion of privilege bits: register for a workshop, edit wiki, use Moodle, use Edu-Grid, shell access, etc.
    • Possibly never assign rights until after we've confirmed they have shown up in person
Retrieved from "http://wiki.sc-education.net/index.php/SC_Web_Content_Steering_Proposal"
Personal tools
SC Education sites