evaluation done

fixed the evaluation, going to send my tutor the questions and see what she thinks. it doesn't have to be up by end of next week, so there's no rush with it...

first ci reported

got the first critical incident reported today... was a programming error, had changed a thing in one place but not in the other... and now it's fixed :)

mail sent to norway

got a mail sent to norway... we'll see what happens there.

small updates

fixing small things here and there at the request of the coordinators. seems that the evaluation is working quite well :) they have been posted on the forum, so it's good to keep and will be of use for the report.

have started thinking a little bit on the questionnaire and the questions. will probably work a bit on fixing the report as well, the things I have to change and add in the background after the comments from my tutor, and also the addition of the new article.

help done!

took me a while, but finally finished with the help, and I think I managed to cover everything on all pages. hope it helps...

ci fixed

critical incident reporting is fixed and working. I also fixed the motd to reflect evaluation phase. will send basically the same mail out tomorrow. have to prepare the questionnaire so it's ready and done when needed.

slow day

didn't get much done today... took screenshots of all pages and prepared a help page, but I need to put some explanations to the pictures. haven't really gotten started with the evaluation yet, have to fix the CI and then send a mail...

major facelift!

the whole site underwent a major facelift today, and now actually looks good! thank you kertu for your help :)

I got a reply from my tutor, where she asked me to think about how I was going to do things, after I explained a bit. hope she's happy with my further explanations, I have quite a good view of how I want to do things.

found another article (Remote Evaluation: The Network as an Extension of the Usability Laboratory) that explains something called critical incident reporting, where users/evaluators report critical negative or positive incidents as they happen, directly from the tool they're evaluating. the advantage is that the memory is fresh, and they can hopefully describe things well, so that the developers can fix them. I'm going to set it up so it can be done, and incorporate it in the site. I think it can be a very helpful tool. that article also had a few versions of remote evaluation, including digital questionnaires and automatic logging, so it means I'm not totally off.

forum use!

we agreed through the forum with the coordinators that they shouldn't be able to add studycircles, but should instead urge the tutor to report it through the page. if they really need to add it, they can go report it themselves through the report page, in the tutor's name.

I added so they can change start and finish time of the circles, might be good in case something goes wrong. I've also improved the logging system a bit, at least for updating persons, now I have to fix it for updating study circles. shouldn't be too hard I think.

tomorrow evaluation starts! first task: help page!

help?

did some minor updates, fixed a few bugs, or perhaps I should call them "features" ;-)

figured it would be a good idea to set up a help system as well... or at least some sort of manual that tells and shows what can be done where. I'll work on that.

mail

just sent a mail to my tutor explaining my thoughts and plans when it comes to the evaluation. they are basically:

• let them work now for three weeks, doing their usual tasks
• I will not do any major changes, only fix bugs and some design, perhaps new functions if they really ask for/need it
• I have tried to plan and prepare ahead of time, informing as much as possible
• I will use the message of the day function to keep them up-to-date
• the forums (main forum, bugs and suggestions, and questions and answers) will hopefully be used as much as possible, and I will be very attentive there and reply all questions
• I am going to develop the logging system a bit more, and inform them about how and for what I will use it
• possibly have some sort of evaluation sheet after two weeks
• I might also ask friends from norway to have a look at it as they are in a very similar situation to us...

now awaiting comments from my tutor :)

done?

I think I'm done now with the implementation... managed to fix automatic update of statistics, and also the possibility to edit the people directly from the study circle view... as well as allow or statements in the sorting... so it's all good. unless they ask for something more today, I'm done with that part for now.

the evaluation part isn't complete yet, but I have made a list of how things are going to happen... figured it's also a good idea to look at what I actually wrote in my report :)

mail and other stuff

sent a mail to the coordinators now explaining the situation... two-three more days of implementation, and then it's just evaluation. I have a basic idea of how to do it, but want to figure it out and plan it better.

arranged another way of searching for the participants, it takes a lot now for the system not to find a person. it also looks if the previous books are done, so it can give a warning when it happens. it's of course up to the coordinators what they want to do with it after that, but at least now they'll easily know.

also eased up things a little bit for the tutors when they report their finished study circle. it searches for previously reported circles under their name and they can just choose which one they want to finish and then add/subtract names. makes things easier for the system, and hopefully for them too :)

update fixed

now the coordinators can update the study circles as well... just the participants for now, I doubt anything else really changes... I supposed I could add a thing for the start and finish as well, might be a good idea...

still have to fix the linking to the statistics of the people, so that the started study circle gets added to their name... that's gonna be a little bit hard, but at least I know where to do it, now it's just the how...

three more days of developing, and then it's use and evaluation for three weeks. am going to read a couple of articles to see how they suggest evaluation to be done, and then adapt it to my situation. I want to have a plan done by thursday to be able to get comments from my tutor...

approved!

fixed the approval, now they see it as a new event when they sign in and have to approve it for it to appear in the statistics. gonna let them edit and delete it as well.

also connected the studycircle reporting from the tutors to the whole system... both starting and finishing, should hopefully minimize the risk for errors.

motd

fixed a message of the day that appears on the main page when they login... handy tool!

next step is to arrange the new studycircles so they can be "approved" by the coordinators as they sign in... this is gonna be hard :)

reporting study circles

this is going to be a major issue... since the database needs exact matches, there has to be some way of checking the input to make sure it matches existing data. all day today went to create some sort of searching algorithm to check the database versus entered data in a field. I've gone so far as to compare phonetics of entered versus matching data to find it... it isn't fool proof, but it's working reasonably well, and can fix most of the simple typos and spelling errors. now just to implement it, haha...

add people

now people can be added too :)

site moved

moved the site to bahai.se now... hope it works :)

edit people

fixed so people can now be edited.

history

took me all day to fix the history... was a mess to get the line diagram to work, but it finally does. now they can save and check history for any cluster, and also choose on the viewing which saved dates they want to view. right now it's not much to have as there is no historical data saved, but this will be very useful in the future, to see progress and such.

it also saves automatically at the beginning of each month. sweet!

automatic and manual statistics saving

... is done!

now I just need to figure out how to use it...

q&a

got a few questions and answered them today... am looking at creating automatic history reports every month, and also enabling creation of them at any given point. that's gonna be a bit of a mess, but I think it should be doable, need some thinking :)

managed to add circles, participants and non-Bahá'ís to the cluster report, which means that it is exactly what the coordinators have to report before the meetings of the institute board... that's good, one of their requests fulfilled!

cluster updated

managed to get a cluster page shown... a nice summary of how many have gone through the books, active and finished study circles the past 3 months. pretty much what the coordinators need to report whenever asked for, so it's almost meeting their needs. just needs a little bit of tweaking.

the difficult parts are left though... database updates and insertions, both to edit the different people, and also when study circles are reported... that's gonna be hard to fix.

some coordinators have also logged on and checked it out, no comments yet on anything though, except that some of the info is not really updated, but that's no surprise, and was exactly the reason I wanted them to check it already now. hope to get it done soon...

launch!

just sent a mail to the coordinators and asked them to register and try it out now... I need the information to be updated, so that's gonna be their task for the upcoming week and half. I still also need to think about how the evaluation part should be done. today I'm going to try and fix the clusters.

launch?

it might be time for a beta launch soon... got the study circles and reports (with diagrams) working now, as well as statistics and the forum since before. managed to fix some of the referral problems from before, though it is a bit weird at times, but that'll have to be one of the features of this release. other than that, it's ready for registration, I hope. gonna have to ask them to fill in some of the info that I am missing, so that we have an up-to-date database... maybe I'll send out a mail later tonight or tomorrow morning after checking through some stuff.

Naturally it looks like something that might've appeared on the web ~10-15 years ago, but right now design and aesthetic appeal isn't my main focus, that will come later. it's more important that there is some sort of functionality, so that they can get an understanding of how the system works/will work...

study circles...

study circles are almost finished... I managed to get the filtering and sorting for clusters and books done, but am still having problems with wanting to view more than one book at a time... the OR statement basically messes everything up for me... gotta take a bit of closer look on it.

next step after that will be trying to fix reports... soon I'm going to give the coordinators access to the whole system... just gotta make sure there are no huge, disturbing bugs. no doubt there are right now :)