Use_case

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Use Case

Research Questions

Question #	Question Text	Analysis	Data Sources	How user might query
1	Have my course grades declined over the years?	ANOVA of course grades, individual exam grades	Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with records of student grades for each year	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing
2	Why are my course grades declining? Are more students taking AP (bio) and placing out of this course?	Relationship among ACT/SAT scores, AP bio scores, course grades	Registrar demographic data: ACT/SAT scores, AP Bio scores; course grades; Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with records of student grades for each year	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing
3	Has the use of clickers improved student learning in my course?	Correlation (regression) between clicker use, clicker score(s) and exam scores	Registrar demographic data; Faculty uploaded exams, tagged by topic; Faculty uploaded clicker questions, tagged by topic; Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Annual records of student grades, Student grades on individual assessment items, Student grades or responses on individual clicker items	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing. Within courses, I will mark assessment items of interest (clicker questions on topic a, assessment questions on topic a)
4	What is the impact of multiple attempts at online homework on exam scores in my course?	Correlation between number of tries and exam scores Regression/partial regression using GPA or other control variables	Registrar demographic data Registrar GPA data Faculty uploaded exams, tagged by topic Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores Student grades on individual items	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing With-in each course, I will mark assessment items of interest (homework questions on topic a, assessment questions on topic a)
5	How are my students performing on a particular topic? Are they doing better on evolution this year (versus last year)?	Pre-test/post-test analysis ANOVA of grades on specific assessment items	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubric for each year, tagged by topic Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores for each year, Student grades on individual assessment items for each year	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing Within each course, I will mark assessment items of interest
6	How are my students performing on questions that are of a higher Bloom’s level?	Descriptive statistics on questions based on classifications – correlation Cluster analysis (PCA) of outcomes based on classification, topic, and the interaction of those two	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubric, tagged with Bloom’s data Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores for each year; Student grades on individual assessment items for each year	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing Within each course, I will mark assessment items of interest to me, based on Bloom’s levels
7	Does a particular teaching innovation (i.e. Avida-ED) impact student learning of a particular topic (i.e. Evolution) in my course?	Correlation between innovation and exam score (or score on particular assessment items on exam) over time	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubric for each year, tagged by topic Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores for each year; Student grades on individual assessment items for each year	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing Within each course, I will mark assessment items of interest to me, based on keywords or tags\Demographic data Rubric for exam or assessment items Student response data for exam or assessment items (at T0 and T1) Student scores for exam or assessment items (at T0 and T1)
8	Is there a difference in course grades between sections? (e.g. Different sections could be taught by different TAs, at different times, etc)	Correlation between section and individual assessment (or assessment items)/course grades (or between TA and section grades)	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubric for each year, tagged by topic Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores; Student grades on individual assessment items	Log-in as myself, check-off my courses that I am interested in analyzing
9	How do my students compare with students from another school on topic x?	Correlation between institution and grade on topic x.	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubrics, tagged by topic Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores; Student grades on individual assessment items Metadata linking course to a particular type/sized institution	Log-in as myself, check off my courses that I am interested in analyzing Select my assessment items from topic x Search database for additional school to analyze that are similar in Carnegie categorization, similar in course size, all schools Search these assessments for items on topic x
10	For accreditation, I would like to show that our students have learned y.	Comparison of student performance at T0 and T1.	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments and rubric, tagged with topic and Bloom’s data Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with: Student exam scores for each year; Student grades on individual assessment items for each year	Log-in as myself, check off my courses that I am interested in analyzing Select my assessment items from topic x
11	What levels of understanding are typically targeted by assessments in introductory (or upper) level biology courses at my institution/at institutions similar to mine/at all institutions?	Proportion of lower-level Bloom’s items to higher-level Bloom’s items Histogram of data	Faculty uploaded assessments, tagged by Bloom’s data Metadata form tagging course level, institution information (size, type)	Search for all assessment items in courses at the 100-level
12	What misconceptions do students generally hold about topic d?	Qualitative analysis of student responses and scores to parse out misconceptions	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments tagged with topic and Bloom’s data	Search for all assessment items on topic d
13	What is the impact of course size on the assessments used?	Correlation between course size and Bloom’s taxonomy level	Registrar demographic data Faculty uploaded assessments tagged with topic and Bloom’s data Metadata form indicating course size	Search for courses of a particular size
14	Are low performers in my course also struggling in other courses?	Correlation between course grade or individual assessment grade and university GPA, major GPA	Registrar demographic data Registrar GPA data Faculty uploaded spreadsheet with student course grades	Log-in as myself, check off my courses that I am interested in analyzing
15	How reliable is my exam question taxonomy?
May 18, 2007	What areas or concepts in biology/chemistry/physics are students having difficulty with?
May 18, 2007	How did students do on all questions of a given topic? -within a class -within a course -within an institution -across the database
May 18, 2007	How did students do on a question that required a certain level of thinking?
May 18, 2007	I would like to find those questions on topic X where students did particularly well or poorly (depending on my own criteria of good and bad)
May 18, 2007	Compare performance of two (or more) groups of students on an item or set of items -over time (this year versus last year) -gender or ethnic background -majors or non-majors

The following use cases and database requirements come from weekly meetings of the Database Development Team.

No.	Meeting Date	Use Case Description	Decision Made?	dBase as Test Bank	User training/ documentation	Content metadata	Course Metadata	Query related	System Requirement	Must/Should/Nice to have
1	April 13, 2007 September 18, 2007 June 19, 2007	Tagging assessment items: with Blooms data, concept categories, learning objective, some other taxonomy tag in multiple ways tag with multiple raters	yes - will support			x				Must
2	July 3, 2007	Assessment items will be tagged according to a domain specific ontology Biology ontology: NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus Ontologies must not be rigid -- must allow for additions.	yes - will support	x		x		x		Must
3	February 4, 2007 MU-L JLM	Rubrics: database must support multiple rubrics for an assessment item multiple scores for an assessment item multiple raters of an assessment item	yes - will support	x		x				Must
4	April 13, 2007	Data storage: Must store raw response data for assessment items point values for assessment items and assessments (i.e., entire exams) student grade on assessment item	yes - will support			x				Must
5	December 4, 2007	Data return format: rectangular	yes - will support						x	Must
6	February 4, 2008	Return of assessment items: Will users pick out one question at a time, or will they check off those questions they are interested in downloading? What format will questions be returned - xml, QTI, etc?	pending	x			x			Must
7	May 18, 2007 October 9, 2007	Data upload: non-MC exams and student responses. Student responses are a scanned image -or- electronic.	yes - will support							Must
8	February 7, 2008	Security: Faculty who upload data must agree that any identifying information in student responses has been removed any identifying information in their syllabus that they do not wish to be published in the dBase has been removed.	yes - will support -- how?						x	Must
9	April 13, 2007 May 4, 2007	Security: Student ids will be hashed with a unique identifier Faculty and university ids could also be hashed. data is returned completely anonymous queries are constrained so as to not return a limited dataset that could identify a student.	yes - will support					x	x	Must
10	July 3, 2007 November 6, 2007	I have additional data/metadata I would like to upload. Where can I do that?	yes - will support	x	x	x	x			Must
11	February 18, 2008 MU-L JLM	Editing environment for data: how can faculty fix errors in data they have uploaded?	yes - will support						x	Must
12	April 13, 2007 September 18, 2007 KBS	Minimum metadata requirements: We must define the minimum level of data/metadata included for a submission to be accepted into the database Will uploading a syllabus (which is not searchable) meet metadata requirements?	Must define minimum metadata standards						x	Must
13	May 4, 2007	I would like to import student response data directly from my excel workbook	yes - will support						x	Must
14	June 19, 2007	Demographic data will be available for all queries. Faculty uploaded demographic data must be tagged with the date they were current.	yes - will support				x			Must
15	August 30, 2007	The database must handle multiple instructors for a class.	no				x	x		Must
16	August 30, 2007	Faculty members must be able to indicate pages on an exam that are blank, devoted to a figure, picture or formula	yes - completed?						x	Must
17	September 11, 2007	Database will treat sections of a course as separate courses. How can we alleviate work for a faculty member uploading the same assessment for 60 sections of a very large course?	yes				x	x		Must
18	October 9, 2007	Query: track students over time.	yes - will support				x	x		Must
19	May 18, 2007 June 19, 2007	Metadata query: Query for common misconceptions	yes - will support	x		x				Must
20	July 31, 2007	Non-traditional assessments: Scientific reasoning instruments, concept inventories, published assessment Assessment items will not fit a discipline-based ontology	yes	x	x	x		x		Must
21	June 12, 2007	I would like to query across data levels (i.e. query for particular assessment items at an institution over time and courses	yes - will support			x	x	x		Must
22	August 30, 2007	Who can access the database? -- One solution: Two levels of data: Personal data (visible only to the individual who uploaded) and Public (visible to everyone)	pending	x	x					Should
23	November 6, 2007	Multiple taxonomies: What is the scope? Who can use a particular taxonomy -- public (i.e., Blooms) and private taxonomies (i.e., professional society tags on 'good' assessment items)?	yes - will support	x		x		x		Should
24	December 4, 2007	Query: Search database on a paticular type of institution, based on the Carnegie classification system.	pending					x		Should
25	December 4, 2007	Save search history syntax in order to repeat search at some point in the future. Alternatively, return search syntax with query results.	pending					x	x	Should
26	KBS	I would like to filter out low-level Bloom questions, multiple choice questions, essay questions, etc.	pending	x				x		Should
27	KBS	Fostering collaboration: will faculty information be available? Can faculty decide whether to make their contact information available?	pending			x	x	x		Should
28	KBS	Unconventional assessment items: database will store the item Student response data (excel, word files, etc) will also be stored.	yes - will support	x					x	Nice
29	November 6, 2007	I have no idea how to classify my assessment items.	no		x					Nice
30	May 18, 2007	Query: Find questions based on format (clicker, mc, short answer, etc) Find questions that include a particular format element (graph, image, model)	pending -- can this information be gleaned from the parsing software?	x		x		x		Nice
31	June 19, 2007	Query: What conceptsare considered difficult across disciplines. Will the database compute dynamic metadata such as the difficulty of an item? Such data would change based on the data from the students. Difficulty and other performance metrics should be dynamic, rather than asking faculty to upload them.	pending - will we provide simple analysis?	x		x		x		Nice
32	December 4, 2007	Data analysis: simple analysis of change over time returned with the data.	pending				x	x		Nice
33	January 10, 2008	Syllabus: Will it be query-able? Probably not. Will it be anonymized on upload? Probably not. Faculty will take responsibility for anonymization.	pending				x			Nice
34	Purdue	Who can access data across courses/faculty members? Adiminstrator use to demonstrate compliance of accreditation standards.	pending							Nice
35	November 27, 2007	User will be able to search nbii thesaurus and with a mouse click, add that concept tag to their assessment item(s).	yes?	x		x				Nice
36	April 13, 2007	I would like to import data directly from my course management software (e.g. Angel, Blackboard, WebCT, etc)	outside current scope						x	Nice

How will users query?

Assessment item (individual question)
Student responses

On individual items
On a group of items (i.e. an exam or user-defined number of questions)

Concept category

Functional requirements (based on use cases) can be found on the Functional_requirements page

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This particular version was published on 20-Feb-2008 12:44:27 PST by uid=momsenj,o=MSU.