LEEP Wishlist
From GSLISWiki
Please add items to the wishlist and add comments to the items that already exist. What is especially helpful is explanations as to why a particular feature is useful, desireable, etc.
If you would like to see all recent changes, the "history" tab above may prove useful. Alternatively, if you create an account, you can "watch" the page, and then check "my watchlist" on a semi-regular basis.
This list was in no particular order, but I had a compulsion to organize it into categories. Sorry. So now, the entries within each category are in no particular order. -Ingbert
Contents |
[edit] General
- Multi-cast audio
- Accessibility
- Application sharing
- More dynamic news on log in page
- Make the web site look nicer
- A system that is scalable up for load, down for richness and interactivity
- Ability to support richer environment when bandwidth isn't an issue
- ability for students to see whole class bios
- Ability to create "Classrooms" which are not linked to a single semester. This would be especially useful for Student Groups, so that they do not have to have last semester's "classroom" data copied or linked into the next semester's data.-Tim Donohue
- ability to have a text chat log emailed to a user directly
[edit] General Usability
- Log out button
- Course schedule should list courses by name, and not by numbers. It should also be easier to read through
- I think it should probably list both, in order by course #. (MLindner)
[edit] Administration and Program Design
- "Need a bootcamp for instructors with ongoing regular contact to share ideas, information. Best practices/models to share." -Anonymous
- I think this idea for an instructor bootcamp to share pedagogy and see how different people do things is an interesting idea. I think it may serve the same function for the administrators of LEEP as groupwork does for the instructors--reducing the load while improving the experience for everybody by allowing people to learn from each other. Perhaps instead of or in addition to a bootcamp model you might want a (mandatory?) yearly retreat model. Perhaps the yearly retreat should happen when instructors are in the middle of teaching so that their ideas are fresh? -Ingbert
- I think this is an interesting idea; however, I'm not sure if it's 100% feasible. One of the beauties of the LEEP program is that we can have instructors at a distance, most of whom are professionals and academics, already working in other jobs or teaching at other institutions. We already ask them to take up to a week (per semester) to come to campus for LEEP weekend - I guess I just wonder how willing most would be to take time off work, pay for travel expenses, etc etc ANOTHER time in the semester/year, especially those seasoned teachers who could probably offer the most to the group, but have the least incentive to come. A LEEP conference call is offered at the beginning of each semester, and was attended by maybe half the instructors this semester (Spring 06). Again, I think it's a fantastic idea, but when there are difficulties in scheduling an hour-long training phone call, scheduling a retreat would be even more difficult. - Elizabeth
[edit] Ideas for New LEEP Tools
- Calendar
- Blogging
- Wikis (for class and for students)
- RSS Feeds?
- I am always modifying the web pages and I feel bad about sending yet another e-mail to clutter my students' inboxes (Week 6 is up!) (Exercise #7 is posted!) (Sorry about the error. I fixed it!). RSS is more appropriate, economical in terms of info-to-noise. -Cheryl Tarsala
[edit] Improvements for Current LEEP Tools
- Working Citrix with more software available.
[edit] Classroom Tools
- True whiteboarding
- wiki (or a much better chalkboard thing) Maybe it should have a catchy cyber-name since nobody uses chalkboards anymore anyway-- *Hyper*board or *Cyber*board or *Live*board or *wiki*board Chalkboard is painful to modify and under-utilized as a class tool. -Cheryl Tarsala
- Time stamp the audio
- Screen sharing: watch what I do as I use this application
- Along with the above entry, some kind of drawing functionality, like with MS Paint. This allows people brainstorming in groups to flesh out their ideas in a visual way. -Tim Lockman, 18 April 2005
- Multi-app sharing: watch as I do a six way search in tabbed browsers over Google, Google Scholar, ACM DL, Citeseer, etc., skimming the downloaded PDFs to assess relevance, copying useful stuff into my word processor, tidying it up and then refining my searches based on what I see.
[edit] Bulletin Boards
- A standard php bb system with an integrated search function as well as viewing posts by member name (copied from a bb post, not sure what it means)
- Option to "view next unread" from within a message (instead of needing to go back to the list of messages and find the next unread) Can't you already do that by clicking on the "Next unread" link?
- If understand the above correctly, the answer is 'yes.' BUT, "Next Unread" takes you to the next 1st-level Unread message. It does not go to the next Unread in the same thread--that is disconcerting and a pain to say the least (MLindner).
- Option to "mark unread" or "mark for followup" or "mark important"- Would be useful for those messages that you want to respond to, but don't have time right now. Also would be useful for marking messages that you found important and you want to go back to later.
- Second this! I can email it to myself and do; but it just increases my email and attendant headaches (MLindner).
- Dislike having to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to read the most recent posts on a given BB. '
[edit] WebFTP
- Text editor in WebFTP needs to be able to handle bigger files.
- Second opinion- definitely.
- Seconded - Yes! This is a dangerous situation as many found out in 501 Fall 03 (MLindner).
- Allow spiders to crawl WebFTP
- Second Opinion: I disagree on this one - it is very nice to have work space that is actually private, and as I have gone out into the world, I find that I still appreciate having this private server space to load/store my work in. Perhaps a compromise might be made, such as having private and indexed root folders? --198.178.132.253 12:47, 15 Apr 2005 (EDT)Rudy
- I agree with Rudy. It is very nice to have to be able to put up what I need for classes but also to be able to have locked away from the entire world! Sometimes though I do wish for some to be public. So, I second a possible compromise involving some way of having both (MLindner).
- Allow directory indexing
- Is there any way to get a more robust FTP program, so we can upload whole folders at once? I know this can be done with an external telnet program, but it would be nice to have a one-shot deal.
- WebFTP should allow multiple files to be uploaded at once
- Allow secure storage of files that are only viewable by people who are logged into the LEEP system, and files that are completely private, or only viewable by your particular class. -Ingbert
- You might want to check out the iLabs security model--it's a role-based model, and works pretty well. -Ingbert
- Have web pages stored on the LEEP server render correctly in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. This issue has been reported as not being a problem with NetFiles
- Is this backwards? I see files stored in NetFiles not displaying if viewed in Firefox.
- I did some looking into this a few months back and talked with Matt & Jill. I found a possible answer on the net and Matt had it checked by Systems and it supposedly isn't our servers. I face this issue all over the internet with Firefox; which I still use as my default browser. The issue, while possibly involving more than this, is simply an issue of the way Firefox renders code vs. other browsers. It is supposedly more standards-compliant and also more unforgiving (as it should be) so not everything displays in Firefox. Opera has some issues too due to 'strict' standards-compliance. Is everyone writing valid HTML/XHTML & CSS? Not a guarantee, but pretty much fixes most of the issues (MLindner).
Italic textNote from Jill Gengler: ask me about why stuff isn't crawlable! It's one of my best stories. In a nutshell, I got a call during a live session where Joe Schmoe (from Florida, not associated with UIUC) screamed at me because I (me, personally) broke his Internet. One of the worst calls I've taken.
[edit] Instructor Options
- Graphical marking up of assignments like circling and highlighting on webpages. So, if a student submits a webpage for an assignment, normally I'd print it out and mark up on it and hand it to the student, but in LEEP I have to describe my comments in explicit text. I would like, at a minimum, to be able to circle and number aspects of the page for easier reference in my evaluation. Is this making any sense?
- "Ability to grade homework online (make comments in the webpage)." -Anonymous
- "Need an easier way to grade homework and return feedback to the student. Currently am using different font color from student." -Anonymous
- "Grading is hard in LEEP. Comments typed up in email seem to feel more formal, critical so to “soften the blow†I end up writing a lot more than I would if I could give feedback on the paper (like I do in my on-campus class)." -Anonymous
- "If I change the location of a resource, I have to change that URL on multiple pages. I’d like some way to be able to make a change in one place and have that change propagate out to all the pages that need to be updated. Link checking." -Anonymous
- "Have to set up URLs for slides one by one. Want to be able to paste in a whole bunch of URLs all at once and be done with it." -Anonymous
- "When I have 2 sections, a lot of time is spent doing the same task for both sections. With slides, I want to use the slides I set up for section A in section B. But I can’t. I have to set up the slides for section B all over again." -Anonymous
- "Easy Powerpoint ‡ HTML conversion (upload .ppt to LEEP, click a button, get HTML files out)." -Anonymous
- The "save as webpage" feature built into powerpoint seems to work ok. Of course, to get it to work on LEEP you'd have to upload the whole folder and all of its contents of the associated files, which would be a pain. Perhaps a simple solution to this problem would be to allow users to upload entire folders at a time, without zipping them first. Of course, this assumes that uploading entire folders is simple... -Ingbert
- "Would like to be able to show a video of a practitioner at work so that students can see everything that is involved." -Anonymous
- "Need to have some way for technology to facilitate student group work (outside of class)." -Anonymous
- I think this has been addressed, but I posted it for completeness. -Ingbert
- "Creating bulletin boards can be time consuming." -Anonymous
- "Would like to be able to send a slide that has special characters in the URL (ie CGI)." -Anonymous
- "Would like some way to have students do “show and tell†in LEEP class. In face-to-face, they can bring in clippings or physical objects to pass around and share. How to do this in LEEP (not everyone has a scanner, how would you “pass around†a book)?" -Anonymous
- "Would like to be able to play different audio tracks to the different small groups" -Anonymous
[edit] Community Support & Social Network Enhancement
- "Who is logged in?" with either opt-in or opt-out option
- Ability to IM someone who is logged in
- Does Yahoo! IM have an API? Then we could use most of Yahoo!'s functionality, and let students use one display, but integrate it into the LEEP system. -Ingbert
- Have the chat room remember your /nick
- "Social Network Visualizations of Bulletin Board Posts." -Anonymous
- Photo avatars for each student/teacher/participant posting on BBs, chatrooms, live. Visualizing faces helps get to know people and is a plus for post-grad school networking. mwt
[edit] Site Navigation
- Site search
- Site map
- Site map with alot more detail. Perhaps collapsible categories to minimize scrolling.
[edit] Information Retrieval
- Better bbs search
- Bio search
- Audio file search
- Archivable bulletin board
- "Follow me as I search"
[edit] System Administration
- Easier user management (NO user mgmt),
- I just had an insight. It would be helpful for those who support LEEP (User Services, GA's, etc.) to have a link that popped them directly into the Tech room versus going through a class - This specific situation isn't for the GA/Staff that is assigned to the course (makes sense they should sign on through their class) but rather when on the phone or needing to alert the GA running the course, being able to pop into the Tech room directly could be a lot faster and more direct.
- Just a thought :)
- Actually, that is a good thought Ingbert! Not sure what your methodology is in the re-design (I'll have to go back and look), but if the group is talking to folks you might want to consider talking to us Tech GAs about our end of it too. The profs and students experiences are the most important, of course, but the 'man behind the curtain' had a role to play too (MLindner).
