asset: Academic Survey System & Evaluation Tool Bert G. Wachsmuth Seton Hall University

2 Overview Introducing asset Registered User’s View How to create and maintain surveys Respondent’s View How to take a survey or a vote Researcher’s View How to obtain data for a survey Administrator’s View How to setup asset and maintain users Programmer’s View How does asset really work

3 Introducing asset asset = Web-based survey tool Create, maintain, administer surveys and voting ballots View online data summary and export data Why ? Completely easy to use Not tied to existing entities (e.g. Blackboard courses) Flexible authentication (institutional and outside subjects and researchers, even in mixed groups) Voting capability Data stored locally There was ‘asset version 1’, based on “shared surveys” principle

4 Introducing asset asset in Technical Terms Requires: Servlet-Enabled web server (Apache, Tomcat) SQL Database (MySQL) LDAP server (optional) Exclusively Java (servlets + supporting classes) Easily configurable (we hope)

5 Registered User’s View Registered User = a person defined as a ‘user’ inside asset Local: user ID independent from other user ID’s Institutional: standard institutional ID and password via LDAP Can create and maintain surveys Can submit surveys in temporary mode Can view and export survey results Note: Could easily allow registered asset access via LDAP-defined categories instead of manually creating asset user accounts

6 Respondent’s View Respondent = subject taking the survey No password (anonymous survey) Survey-specific password Survey access-list mixing ‘local’ subjects and LDAP- authorized subjects Access via URL Requires user name, [password], [survey password] Stored Data Machine IP and date User name (anonymized for voting) Actual survey responses

7 Researcher’s View Researcher = person accessing survey data Survey owner has access by default Grant access to registered asset users Grant access to anyone (public survey) Online Summaries Response counts Simple data summaries and lists Depends on survey element type Download Data SPSS ( *.sps syntax file) Excel ( *.csv delimited file) start SPSS with sample data file start SPSS with sample data file

8 Administrator’s View Administrator = who maintains asset system All day-to-day maintenance from inside asset Two administrative users ( asset and root ) Can edit all surveys and see all survey data Standard Tasks Create/edit registered asset users Monitor system resources Change survey ownership Advise users on survey design

9 asset as Voting Tool Vote = survey with controlled anonymous access Survey with list-based access restriction Survey Status set to anonymous Subjects take survey at most once Create appropriate voting questions Asset records who submits vote when, but removes personal information from response data Can automatically send to all members, members who did not yet vote, or members who already voted Can quickly see who voted but can not find out what votes they submitted Data summary available when survey is closed

10 Programmer’s View Programmer = installs asset for local use and/or modifies asset source code asset at Seton Hall maintained by undergraduate CS students Free trial-usage on SHU system as guest Free usage (for now) on SHU system for educational institutions Free downloadable source code for your own installation No (guaranteed) support: 0 x 0 help desk assistance asset is part of our Thinklets collection of Java programs and applets

11 Database Tables

12 asset Package Overview

13 Servlet Hierarchy

14 Survey & Element Classes

15 Helper Classes SQLHelper: handles (virtually) all interactions with SQL server (SQLTable stores small SQL tables) HTMLHelper: provides standard menus, filters, conversion methods to ensure uniform look Authenticator: provides methods ldapCheck and localCheck to return true or throw Exception MailHelper: very simple class to send SMTP mail General: contains asset configuration constants (base & icon directory, LDAP server, SMTP server, SQL server & login info)

16 Check out asset To try out asset: Login as “guest”, password “seton hall”, and login as “local user” To download the package: Wait until this weekend (Dec. 16 th, 2002) Comments: Bert Wachsmuth