Submitted by Joe Antonioli
This summer, the Digital Media Tutors took on numerous projects, more than three times what had been proposed in the past. The following tallies do not include the walk-in Language School assistance.
Number of proposed projects – 90
Number completed or being supported this fall – 84
Faculty and staff we worked with (not including research or staff assistants) – 64
Images scanned with metadata – ~1400
Videoclips – 32
Original video – 8
Blogs created and designed – 16
Segue sites, created and re-imagined – 11
3D projects – 7
Wikis – 2
Maps – 2
Formal one-on-one instruction sessions – 17
FYSE assignments – 13
Other class assignments – 3
Some of these projects will continue this fall, as the DMTs who worked with faculty during the summer will now support the First Year Seminar classes taught by those professors. For samples of their work and activities, go to http://sites.middlebury.edu/dmts/ and http://sites.middlebury.edu/virtualmidd/.
Thank you to Brett Wilhelm for setting up the development environment for WordPress MU, allowing us to test plugins before bringing them to the production environment.
Recently, three more plugins have been added. Private Only allows the owner of a blog to require a login for anyone to view their blog. WP-Stats will allow a blog owner to view user activity on their blog. Ian McBride recommended and tested cForms, a plugin that allows a blog owner to create and embed forms in their blog, and have the submissions sent to the owner via email.
A plugin must be activated so that it can be used on your Middlebury blog. To do this, got to the PLUGINS page (the link is in the upper right-hand side) and click on the Activate link.
If you would like your blog listed on MiddBlogs, please email Joe at jantonio@middlebury.edu.
I’d like to expand on what Joe’s said about the cForms plugin now available in WordPress. We think this is going to be very helpful for people doing data collection who may not need or are not satisfied with the feature set of Key Survey, our academic surveying application.
Here are some of the things YOU can do with cForms in WordPress:
* Create custom formatted emails which contain the data submitted from the form.
* Block spammers from submitting your form and pestering you.
* Allow respondents to send files to you.
* Back up your form so you can make changes and then restore the old form if you’re not satisfied.
* Create a custom form to replace the default comment form on your blog.
* Track submissions in a searchable database that you can download to Excel.
* Add multiple users from your department who can edit and make updates to the form.
* Question types that we don’t offer in our custom programmed forms, like a date field with a calendar to pick from.
I’m putting myself out there as someone who is willing to help people get set up and get using this tool to create and manage their web forms. You can contact me directly with questions and I’d be happy to be involved in setting up a structured workshop if there is sufficient interest.
For reference, here’s an outline of the systems we offer for online data collection, and the types of things we think they’re best used for:
Custom Programmed Web Forms
– eCommerce
– Forms that require username/password authentication for respondents
– Forms that required the institutional design
Key Survey
– Data collection that requires a reporting or analytics tool (i.e. SPSS)
– Data collection that requires multiple page forms and/or branching logic
– Requires pre-loading of respondent information from other data source (i.e. Banner)
– Requires the strictest data security (i.e. Academic Research)
– Voting/elections that don’t require username/password authentication
– Requires ability to bulk email a group of people a link to the form / send reminders
cformsII / WordPress
– Any non-sensitive data collection not covered by the other services
– Requires ability to edit form responses
– Requires spam prevention
– Requires file uploads