119 DYNAMIC TECHNOLOGIES ON THE WEB: EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION APPLICATIONS Doug Martin, Ph.D. University of Cincinnati While it is somewhat trite sounding at this point, it is, nonetheless, appropriate to note that the web has revolutionized communication and information management across many aspects of our society. Certainly, professionals in the speech and hearing sciences have experienced this phenomenon along many dimensions. From a training perspective, the web has provided new or improved means of delivering education content and enabled innovative means of both pre- and in-service training. For a more administrative perspective, the web has facilitated nearly universal access to information and new organization schemes for information. While there are any number of reasons to explain the communication revolution related to the web, two of the more important may relate to the issues of access to the web and ease of development of web pages. Of these two, the ease of development issue is most relevant to this presentation. The traditional means of presenting a web site involves developing a number of web pages and then storing them on a web server for individuals to access. Development of the web pages involves the use of a relatively simple programming language (i.e., HTML) to both present the content and format the output of the content. While the simplicity of developing web pages can be viewed as one of the more obvious advantages in enabling web presentation of information, it can also be viewed as one of the greatest limitations in realizing the full potential of webbased dissemination of information. The project described in this presentation resulted from a convergence of the publishing and dissemination capabilities offered by the web and a number of motivating factors related to information organization and dissemination. This project was started while I was the director of the Speech and Hearing Sciences program at Portland State
120 University. During my tenure as director, the university had identified an organizational priority related to student advising and communication. We were also faced with the record keeping challenges built into the new certification standards. With these tasks added to the basic information broker function of higher education administration, a strategic decision was made to utilize more actively the web as a primary information storage and delivery mechanism for our program. On first pass, the decision to utilize the web as a primary information management tool seemed obvious. However, it quickly became obvious that there were technical limitations with basic web protocols that would limit the effectiveness of this project. By its very nature, a web based on traditional HTML is a static presentation medium (see Figure 1 on the next page). When the information contained on a given page becomes outdated the author of the page must, at the very least, edit the given page (if not completely recreate it) and then re-upload it to the server. This may be little more than an annoyance for a small web site consisting of a small number of pages. However, as web sites grow larger and the information begins to cross-link over many pages, this updating process can become a major site maintenance nightmare. Over the last few years, a number of technologies have evolved that have enabled the deployment of much more dynamic and interactive web pages in which information can be automatically updated and the user can more meaningfully manipulate components of the on-screen presentation. Some of the more widely used dynamic content technologies involve the use of a scripting language and a serverhoused database system. Scripting languages can be either client-side (e.g., JavaScript, VBScript) or server-side (e.g., PHP, ASP, ColdFusion). While client-side scripting languages can introduce some degree of dynamic content to a web page, the server side languages, by design, allow the greatest degree of dynamic content control on a web page.
Figure 1. Traditional HTML presentation. 121
122 As shown in Figure 2 (on the next page), a server-side scripting language can dynamically create a complete web page without utilization of any statically-stored HTML code. If a web server is configured to support a given scripting language, then a small program called a scripting engine will be running on the server computer. When a web page is requested that includes scripts to be handled by the scripting engine, the server software will send the requested file to the scripting engine for processing. The scripting engine will execute any scripts embedded in the requested web page generating the new and dynamic content that is returned to the server software as a file written in HTML. The server then forwards the file to the user s browser for display on the screen. As with any typical database system, a server-housed database provides complex storage, manipulation, and retrieval of nearly any type and quantity of data. The web-server database system adds the advantage of nearly universal access to the data. The data available on the server are accessed via scripts written directly into the web page. Utilizing the mechanism described above, the scripting engine can request data from a database and incorporate the data directly into a web page. Thus, with a server-side scripting engine working in conjunction with a web-based database server, web pages can be created that deliver new and current content each time the page is requested. It is this dynamic technology that has enabled the web to become a mature and functional information management system. For the initial phase of this project the PHP scripting language was utilized in conjunction with the mysql database server to build a dynamic information management system for the Speech and Hearing Sciences program at Portland State University. The project is currently being converted for use at the University of Cincinnati. This conversion was necessitated as the University of Cincinnati does not support the PHP/mySQL development tools but instead has chosen to support ASP/MS SQL Server software form the Microsoft corporation. Although the scripts for
Figure 2. Delivery of web pages using a dynamic delivery scheme 123
124 the web pages have to be rewritten to accommodate the new scripting language and database server software, the basic operational and organizational concepts described herein still hold. Example 1: Program News And Calendar The home page for the program website displays news and calendar items that are in effect for the date of the user s visit to the site. The database for the site contains a table that has entries for each news item event and calendar date. These entries each contain start and end dates that control when the items are displayed on the home page. When a user requests the program home page (e.g., enters http://www.uc.edu/csd into the address line of their browser), a script is executed that queries the database for news and calendar items that are scheduled to display on the given date. If any items are scheduled to be displayed, the script gathers the necessary information for displaying the news or calendar items and then automatically generates the necessary HTML code for display of the items in the user s web browser. Figure 3 (on the next page) displays the news item editor web page. Since the information regarding the news or calendar items is maintained in the database, there is no need for anyone to have to edit the actual web page to get the items to display. An editor web page is available (via a password authentication page) to the site administrator that allows him or her to add or edit news and calendar items to the database. The use of the web interface for adding information to the database simplifies the overall management of the site considerably.
Figure 3. Example of function of the New Item editor and home page display. 125
126 Example 2: Online Formative Assessment Management Program The formative assessment requirements written into the new certification standards certainly are presenting numerous challenges to all training programs. While not discounting the efforts that will be required to meet the actual assessment aspects of the program, the recordkeeping requirement may present more of a logistics nightmare to programs. On analyzing the recordkeeping needs for meeting these new standards, a web-base management system seemed to be a very reasonable and useful solution. Figures 4-7 (on the following pages) present an overview of a formative assessment management system that will be implemented at the University of Cincinnati. This system revolves around a so-called learning marker entity. The learning marker is a conceptual entity that defines a measurable activity demonstrating a level of mastery for a given skill or knowledge area, a rubric for defining the students actual level of mastery for the given activity, the specific knowledge or skill area from the certification standard reflected in the defined activity, and the experience (e.g., specific class, practicum, comprehensive exams, case study presentations, etc.) in which the student will be expected to complete the defined activity. Learning marker definitions will be developed in a sufficient number to address all knowledge and skill areas defined in the standards. These definitions will be stored in a master learning marker database. As a student moves through his/her graduate program he/she is evaluated against each of the learning marker definitions. These evaluations are completed by the faculty and instructors in the program and a web page interface is used for entering the evaluation information directly into the formative assessment database (see Figure 5). At any point in time, the individual student s assessment results can be combined with the learning marker definition data to display a web page report of the student s progress against the
127 knowledge and skills defined in the standards (see Figure 6). Figure 7 displays a web-based version of the KASA form that is generated dynamically at any time to serve this reporting purpose. Figure 4. Learning Marker Definition entry page.
Figure 5. Student Assessment entry page. 128
Figure 6. Student performance report for individual class. 129
Figure 7. KASA form generated automatically from stored assessment data. 130