April 5, 2006

VetMed Developers Meeting

Maintenance and Support Issues

Discussion regarding superuser (su) functionality for troubleshooting issues from faculty and student perspectives
Issues with IET's possible solution of Kerberos implementation of false persons (The Staff, etc.) and how that might integrate with VM's CERE system; support personnel need the ability to troubleshoot/test from student point of view, e.g., smtp email issues without sending email to all students

Timimg of maintenance and code upgrades; current QA cycle is to rollout from local development to my to cere.
When can we take CERE down on regular basis for non-critical OS patches, code upgrades & bug fixes (note: critical patches must be ASAP)? Comparison drawn to MyUCD downtime where student quiz attempts fail - downtimes are not published to the general population. VM team needs to determine optimal day/time frame for upgrades and provide notification for all users.

Captivate Help Movies

Rick completed first few movies for review prior to making available to faculty and students. Noted that navigation flow can be difficult when scrolling involved, screen visuals not as clean as he would like. Initial movies about 2/2.5 minutes long; request that the team review the movies.
Discussion of where the content will be available. Issues of localization if integrated into CERE help file location
What are procedures for local changes to sakai (such as adding these links - etc.)?
Most common localizations are property file tweaks; most changes managed by svn;
VM team prefers embedded help movies within CERE help files rather than outside location, even for new users, so that support is available within the application.
So, a local change like this needs to be done in the upgrade cycle and must be redone when there are major Sakai help releases. Process for sakai help release integration needs to be worked out, but is common to other localization processes.

Ilios: Intelligent Library Information Online System

Keith demoed Ilios to VM team. Ilios will be accessed by instructors, course directors, dept admins, for curriculum management. The application is written in CF; Keith reviewed editing capabilities for course information.

MeSH terms (medical terms associated w/course)
Accurate population of terms is critical to courses; probably an instructor function to enter and keep this information up to date; potentially tied into instructor evaluations.

Ilios uses course per term description; the model is for rollout of current course information into next term and to freeze for previous courses. MyInfoVault comparison? MyInfoVault does not contain course information, hand entered model - no info on what was taught by faculty, so not useful for VM model of tying evaluations in with instructor course info.
Ilios uses course/sessions/offering terminology where offering displays date/time/faculty information.
Need to revise terms displayed to be consistent with other systems (some display term revision already done.)
John Gardiner themed design. Ilios is to be the authoritative source for all VM course curriculum.