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

2. Overview Introducing asset Registered User’s View Respondent’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 Why ?
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

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