In 2009, the Academic Success Center (ASC) at Clemson University requested a workspace in CCIT’s Numara Footprints implementation (Numara Software). This request began as a student run project for a computer science course (CPSC 491) at Clemson University taught by Jim Jones. ASC wanted a place where they could track tutor courses offered and which students were attending. During the semester, a workspace was designed and implemented. However, at the end of the semester, the workspace was unusable for ASC.
I was brought in to modify the Footprints workspace and create a front end that tutors could use to input new tutor sessions and record the attendees. In the end, the front end became the primary tool used by the ASC and Footprints was providing nothing more than a database structure for the application. In September 2011, I modified the front end to use an independent set of MySQL tables and Footprints was no longer required.
The application allows an administrator to create locations where tutor sessions can occur. This information can be used later on when reports are generated.
At the beginning of each semester an administrator needs to upload a list of Tutors and the sessions they are qualified to teach.
Then a full listing of all the student body and the courses they are enrolled in is uploaded.
After the tutors and students have been loaded, each individual tutor can log in and create tutor sessions and list the enrollment.
If a student is not enrolled in the course the tutor is teaching, they can add the student manually.
After saving the course, the tutor will receive notification if it was successful or if an error occurred.
The Footprints implementation provided a more robust set of session editing functionality, but the ASC office never used the Footprints interface, so some simple session editing capabilities are available in the front end.
The final piece of the ASC system is a reporting tool which allows a straight data dump by date, or more detailed reports. All the data is exported to a CSV file for Excel. This allows the administrators to manipulate the data in a tool that they are comfortable with and allows for easy distribution of those reports to people who are not familiar with the ASC tutor tracking application.
