Contribution Tool
From AnalysisWiki
The Contribution Tool allows participants to view the use of various features and functions of KF at both the individual and group levels. Figure 1 shows the main window of the Contribution Tool.
Figure 1: The main window of the Contribution Tool.
As can be seen, there are three main areas here. On the left is a set of windows that allows the instructor to choose what data will be displayed. At the top, one can choose the class or group to be examined. Below that, and blacked out here for reasons of confidentiality, is an area that displays individual names of group members. When not blacked out, clicking on a name will allow you to see data for an individual. In the middle is the Date Range window that allows you to choose the date range being studied. The date range is displayed as mm/dd/yy time. Below this window is the Time Interval window and this allows you to choose the level of granularity of time. Day, week, month, or year can be chosen. Finally, the Graph Type window allows you to choose individual or group graphs, and allows you to use names or codes so that data can be displayed anonymously. The middle area in the Contribution Tool window is the Basic Measures window that allows you to choose what data you wish to have displayed. These measures are for individuals, so Figure 1 shows the data for one individual who has contributed 31 notes, 14 build-ons, co-authored 1 note, and so forth. In order for a datum to be displayed in this window, you have to click in the box beside the note and then on the Show Graph button. The final window on the right is used buy the computer to report on the status of the data requested. As there is a lot of data to sift through, this window lets the instructor know what data is being processed. When the data, the group, date range, etc. have been selected, clicking on the Show Graph button will provide a graph of the data. Figure 2 shows a graph of the entire class for a 5-month period.
Figure 2: A graph showing the notes contributed to the database by all class members for a 5-month period.
In order to select all class members for this graph, the first student name was clicked on and then the last name on the list was shift-clicked to select all students. Then note contributions were clicked on (the others being left unclicked,) and the Show Graph button clicked. It takes a little while, but the graph displays the note contribution behaviour for all students. Cut out here for reasons of confidentiality is the window displaying the student names and the colour associated with them. Although it can’t be seen here, this allows the instructor to see which student is represented by which line, allowing individuals to be tracked. Of course, individual students can also be graphed using this tool. Clicking on the Group button allows you to see the data at the group level. Figure 3 shows note contributions for the entire class.
Figure 3: Graph of note contributions for all students for the entire duration of the class.
As can be seen, the contribution graph for the entire class shows a bar graph of the contributions. This allows comparisons among students, but does not show the time span that we see in Figure 2.
