English Dept. Web Site Development: Progress Bulletin Board

Ordered by most recent first
(cut and paste empty tables for new entries at top)

September 20, 2003

Added R. Helgerson's statement to the Faculty Statement section of the TA Handbook. Wrote News Item piece on Coursebuilder. Since I didn't feel comfortable publishing it without Rita or Melissa seeing the text first, I stored it under devleoper/content/2003/files in progress.

September 18, 2003

Wow, a lot has been done and a little yet to do. In the last month, I have linked a variety of technological resources to the site. I have done a final overhaul of the site structure and functioning. I have added a developer's section to the page including a how-to for future users and developers, a project overview, a development team profile. I have also prepared 42 files to be incorporated into the course materials of the EDKB site (they are awaiting indexing and should be added shortly). Other things. [melissa]

September 18, 2003

Zia Isola: Goals and Accomplishments Summer 2003

Inclusion of TA Training Materials/TA Handbook into EDKB:
I was able to accomplish about 75% of my goals with respect to the TA Handbook project. Though many additions remain to be made, the bulk of the most essential and relevant material is now digitized and accessible as part of the EDKB.

Future developers who pick up this project should be aware that the process of hand-scanning and converting each document can be very time consuming. I also found that the content of many of the pages needed updating or rewriting, either because the information was out of date, or because the document had been written as a speaking guide for TA trainers, not as an information piece for broader circulation.

I also attempted to add in-text links where relevant (to university offices, research sites, pedagogical sources, etc), which should greatly enhance the utility of the digital handbook over a print version. The Guide to Campus Teaching Resources is a good example of how I used links to enhance handbook pages.

Future Development Potential:
As indicated above, many pages can be added to the handbook. These additions could be from the print copy, or might be developed independently, according to the needs of TA trainers. It would seem logical for TA trainers to include development of the site in their annual funding requests. I would imagine that as little as 10-20 hours each summer would allow for updates and development that would keep this a vital and meaningful resource.

The original, hard copy is in Dana Spoonerow’s office, and is a good source for ideas, even if the material is not used in its present form.

The structure of the indexs and arrangement of materials could be improved. I am not sure what the organizational/structural logic would be, ideally, the restructuring of the handbook would be included in any re-visioning of the overall EDKB structure.

Development and Inclusion of Supporting Materials for TA Training(faculty comments, personal accounts, etc.)
This material was very, very difficult to extract from people. I still think it is a worthwhile project, but to make it really work we need to solicit (and pester) people throughout the academic year. Perhaps we could establish a file where submitted statements could be stored, then once per quarter anything we’ve gleaned could be posted. I did manage to get Faculty Statements from Shirley Lim, Michael O’Connell, and Richard Helgerson.

As with Coursebuilder, I think that the more we establish precedence for this type of posting, the more readily people will contribute.

Completion of additional EDKB Materials
Once I got hold of the TA Handbook, my work on other EDKB materials fell off. I did start a 152 (Chaucer) folder, but only managed to post one document (like the TA Handbook, the 152 materials exist only in paper copies, and so must be scanned). I would like to develop this resource further, as I think 152 can be especially daunting for non-medievalists who draw this class as a TA assignment.

Guide to using the Universal Bulletin Board
I consulted with Brian Reynolds regarding this project, and abandoned it when he told me that he is considering replacing UBB with a different program. This change would take place by December 2003, so writing a guide to an obsolete program seemed a poor allocation of time. Alan Liu is aware of this change in plan.

Guide to using Coursebuilder
This remains to be done.

News Item about Coursebuilder
This will be complete by Sunday, September 21, 2003.

September 17, 2003

These past few weeks have been extremely busy and productive. I created a First Qualifying Exam reading lists section of the EDKB [here] for the sake of collecting online versions of hard to find texts required for the exam. I also finished uploading section handouts for the coursematerials section of the EDKB [most of which are here]. Most of my work will continue through the weekend as I finish scanning the last articles for the reading lists and finish spiffying up Professor Duffy's 104B coursebuilder page. [mike]

August 29, 2003

Helped Sara Gerend get started on Coursebuilder. Her Fall 187BA class page is still in progress, but well underway. She was excited to find that the program is fairly straightforward and easy to use. She plans to use Coursebuilder for any future classes that she teaches here.

Composed a grievance procedure page with links, which was intended for the TA Handbook but seemed appropriate for the general Instructors Resources index. Once I got to that index, I started thinking about simplifying and consolidating index pages, as it seemed our user side was rather complicated (for no particularly good reason), and that it might therefore become difficult for people to find the resources we hope to make available. With that in mind, I unlinked the indexes for Course Administration, Teaching Notes, and TA Training, and combined the information from those indexes on the surface level of the Instructor's Index. I also put a small "Back to EDKB Main Index" link at the bottom of the page, as I think the uniformity of appearance of EDKB pages can be somewhat disorienting, which could prevent or at the very least discourage visitors from exploring. I recommend that we start putting similar "back" link on all pages, as not all users will be as familiar with the site as we are.

August 26, 2003

Finally got hold of the TA Handbook. This thing is a goldmine. I had no idea how developed it had become, but it has many things we have been working to acquire for EDKB--advice on how to run a discussion section, tips for writing paper topics, grievance procedures, sample syllabi, lesson plans, group exercises, vocabulary lists, etc. Unfortunately, there is no electronic version of this material, so I have to scan it all on Omnipage and translate it to Word.It took me about 5 hours to do 40 pages today (this includes OCR and correcting format in Word), but I've learned some tricks of efficiency as I've gone along, so hopefully this process will go faster when I return to it later in the week. I've started a new folder under teaching/resources/ta_handbook where I'm storing all the raw pages. Not sure how long this will take to convert to EDKB pages; I may have to prioritize and make some strategic choices. If anyone wants to hop in and either help with the scanning or the pagemaking, please let me know. [Zia]

Aug. 20, 2003

This past week I finally got my feet wet with coursebuilder, designing a basic site for Enda Duffy's English 104B, which I plan to continue working on. I also collected teaching materials from Geoff McNeil and put (some) of them up under the EDKB sites for English 105A and English 124. I also finished putting up teaching materials from Kris McAbee on English 15, English 101, and English 102. I began collecting resources for MA Exam materials with an eye to putting them up in the coming weeks. [Mike]

Aug. 20, 2003

Report on my progress by Melissa Colleen Stevenson (I am getting rather fond of that format). The past two weeks has not been as productive as previous weeks in the course of this summer project. A good number of loose ends are coming together, however, and I can see how this project is moving toward its completion. Since my last report I have worked with Vanessa Coloura on completing her website for her second session summer course seen here. Though I must say that I am not happy with the compatibility issues between Coursebuilder and Macintosh computers. I also assisted Zia with uploading images to Elizabeth Freudenthal's course site. This seemed to be a theme for me this week as I also showed our new Instructional Program Assistant Renee Meuret with the same issue.

My main development as far as the EDKB was to design simple icons to distinguish locked, unlocked and instructors' locked resources. I went through each of the websites we have already developed in order to add these icons to the appropriate resources.

The final element of my work over the last few weeks was to determine the course of my remaining time in the project. Before we sign off this summer I hope to add my own resources to the EDKB, to scan in the English 10 Tool Kit (which I obtained from Carolyn Butcher this last week), incorporate a developers page to the EDKB which recognizes our work as early developers for the resources and contains a complete an EDKB guide for future users. [Melissa]

Created a "short-list" of essential TA resources for the EDKB, including annotated links to Instructional Consulting, AGSE/UAW, VOS, and UCSB Library Writing Guides.[zia]

Aug. 19, 2003

I verified that all of the lab machines are at least minimally functional and have the proper software. What I couldn’t fix, I documented, and I will be forwarding a list to Brian. On about half of the systems, I deleted the Dreamweaver site definitions that students have left. Perhaps the fall Transcriptions’ TAs could finish the remainder.

I have also constructed a matrix in html that crosses the machines with the most frequently required software. I discovered, however, that I don’t have “write” permissions to the department site, so the page is not up yet. I’ll ask Brian to set up my permissions, and I will make the page available to you.

Using a little script that Melissa found on the web last year, I am also creating a form in html that allows a user to send discrepancy/error reports directly to the Transcriptions TA. Hopefully this will help eliminate the “Oh, [insert problem here] hasn’t worked in while” form of (not)dealing with discrepancies. Also, every tech place I have ever worked had a log book to record miscellaneous things like hardware malfunctions; perhaps we might try that.

Using a list that Dana gave me, I emailed everyone who took the 1st exam in post 1865 literature. I explained the project and its goals, and I asked the exam takers if they would share their study materials. One of the five has responded, affirmatively; the others have yet to reply.

I had only minimal success in creating an dynamic page that lists all of the courses available in coursebuilder. [Michael P.]

Created a new entry on the Courses Index for English 152 and posted Alex Cook's translation exercise. [Zia]

Aug. 18, 2003

Worked with Alex Cook to develop some of her 152 (Canterbury Tales) materials for EDKB. Materials in hard copy have yet to be scanned. Posted a version of a peer-editing workshop handout for English 10. Waiting on materials from TA trainers, but still planning to develop a TA training component of EDKB that will have links to the TA Handbook as well as commentary from faculty and practical tips from seasoned TAs.[Zia]

Aug. 7, 2003

My weekly report, a little late this time, by Melissa Colleen Stevenson. There has been a great deal of activity in the last week towards the actualization of our site and the development of its contents. In the last week the Shared On-Line Teaching Resources has become the English Department Knowledge Base, the tripartite locking structure was put in place and activated, the template was adjusted and reapplied, I met with the work group regarding the role of VoS to the project and polished our VoS skills, e-mailed a request for materials out to those faculty and graduate students who have recently completed teaching, and transformed all of our raw data into web pages (some difficulty there as it turned out that Mike Frangos and I were working on the same raw materials at the same time). I also met with the group after our most recent general meeting to set tasks and priorities for the remainder of the project. In all, I feel that is was a very productive week and the project is beginning to take on a shape of its own. [Melissa]

Aug. 6-7, 2003

Rita and I have been putting into the "Course Materials" section of EDKB-VoS some of our online primary reading materials. Others in our group have added new categories. This raises the issue of what the organizational relation is between EDKB-VoS and the EDKB.

Alan and Rita discussed by e-mail the organization of "Course Materials" on EDKB-VoS, and came to the conclusion that it would be useful to segregate the topical categories from the author categories, and also to use the "depth flag" judiciously so that the page does not become too unwieldy. Alan made an initial reorganization of this section of EDKB-VoS using the "Edit Order" functions in the VoS editing interface. [Alan]

Aug. 5, 2003

Put up Elizabeth Freudenthal's summer course on department site; assisted Jeannie Provost with putting up her own course (both instructors used Coursebuilder). Encountered a problem with Coursebuilder--it regularly crashes in the "schedule" portion of the editing process when the "submit" button is selected. This is similar to the problem Sarah had (the program would collapse whenever she selected the "italics" button).[Zia]

July 31, 2003

Success with VoS! After corresponding some more with Jeremy, I fixed the technical glitch and set up a project within VoS called "UCSB English Department Knowledge Base." Witnin VoS itself, it appears at the following location: Teaching Resources > General Teaching Resources > UCSB English Department Knowledge Base." Or users can go to the project (and any future subcategories) directly at this link. Currenly there is only a text category and test links within the Knowledge Base.

I have set up permissions and passwords for each of our team members, which I will e-mail to you.

In addition, I spent the better part of the day writing a VoS Developers' FAQ. Included in the FAQ are instructions for using the VoS editing interface and also a VoS stylesheet. Go ahead and log in and play around in the dept. knowledge base site. [Alan]

July 31, 2003

Sent reminder to Englgrad and Summer Teaching Associates encouraging attendance at tomorrow's Coursebuilder wkshp. Individual correspondence with Laura Szantos, Elizabeth Freudenthal, and Jeannie Provost re Coursebuilder. Translated the basic guide to scanning to a webpage using EDKB template; to see the page, go here. (A follow-up note from our meeting with Alan on 8/1: Because the scanning guide is a feature that instructors have requested in the past, it can reasonably be anticipated that there is a ready audience for such a guide. It should, therefore, be more fully developed at some point. The development would include adding more detailed instructions about how to scan and edit various types of documents, plus examples, images, and links.)[Zia]

July 30, 2003

I've been in correspondence with Jeremy, and have also been at work in the VoS database tables trying to implement permissions for our developer team on VoS and a new VoS subproject to be titled English Department Knowledge Base. (I chose the name to accommodate links to both research and teaching resources in the future.) Unfortunately, there is a technical problem that blocks my ability to add new users to VoS. (This is apparently also problem that for several months has blocked the ability of VoS users to sign up for limited editing permissions.) Until we get this problem debugged, our team should continue accumulating links on the static Web page. [Alan]

July 30, 2003

Finished transferring Jeen Yu's teaching materials to SOLTR. Moved finished materials from Raw folder into Done subfolder (may be deleted later) to avoid duplicating work. [Mike]

Explored Photoshop and Omnipage. Wrote brief user's guide to these applications for other SOLTR developers. Consulted with Porter Abbott regarding his concerns about using Coursebuilder.[Zia]

My weekly update by Melissa Colleen Stevenson. Well, this last week has been interesting as far as development goes. Shortly after my last progress report I met with Andrea Fontenot to help her develop her course page for the second summer session. I have also spoken with Vanessa Colura about developing her page further and with Steve Sohn about creating a page for the course he is teaching. I have also contact Marc Coronado and Stephen Deng about using more of their materials on our Shared On-Line Teaching Resources site. Additionally, I fixed a run-time error that was occurring on the site. As a result of our last general meeting, I have redesigned both the folder structure and the menu for the SOLTR site which can be seen here. I have also created a template for our resource pages which contains an attributions table that will allow us to fully credit the sources of our material and make future transition to a database structure far easier. I have also found several further sites for our external links page which can be seen here. I have yet to fully lock our "locked" folders and to create an icon that will indicate that on-site. I remain somewhat frustrated by tech lack of response in the department to developing the SOLTR, but am optimistic that further hounding of grad students and faculty will result in something fruitful. Along with my fellow team member I met this morning and we collectively reviewed scanning technique with both Adobe Photoshop and Omnipage in order to make the transition from paper to digital resource easier. [Melissa]

July 28, 2003

Emailed instructors for second summer session (E. Davis, C. Davis, Hamm, Valentino, Freudenthal) and offered help with Coursebuilder. Solicited materials for SOLTR, from above summer teachers as well as Michael O'Connell. Consulted with Andrea Fontenot regarding potential drawbacks in Coursebuilder user interface. Edited and converted Janet Mallen's "Campus Teaching Resources" page to department template; renamed page "A Guide to Campus Teaching Resources."[Zia]