Tutortrac database design

Tutortrac’s database setup is interesting.  There is only one database of students and this database gets updated each time there is an upload.  What this means is that individual semesters aren’t repositories of snapshot data.  For example, you can’t go back six years, say, to find out how many freshmen came to your center.  Why?  Because all of the freshmen have now graduated and they are no longer freshmen.  For this reason, you cannot do trend analysis on key metrics without having saved each semester’s data outside of Tutortrac.  No one would think to do this as this peculiar behavior is not widely publicized and unless you’re a database expert it’s unlikely that you’d ask.  This is not a feature.  It was a poor design decision that speaks to the disconnect between what users need and what RedRock is prepared to deliver.  Certainly there should be more documentation available and perhaps popup notification every time that an upload is attempted.  There should also be a one click function for exporting the database into some separate repository where it can be easily accessed when needed.

Website 3.0

Website 3.0

This new website improves upon the previous site by focusing on aesthetics, ease of navigation and increased speed and functionality.

Aesthetics

The overall site design is more polished and internally consistent. The intent was for it to be simple while still remaining visually appealing. The red and black scheme complements Rutgers’ design aesthetic. Some visual references to the old site have been retained to maintain a thematic bridge and to facilitate navigation.

Navigation

The site is much easier to navigate. Information is grouped in a more coherent fashion and more functions execute on the same page from which they were called.

Speed

We eliminated several images and minimized the remaining. Pages were eliminated when possible. As a result, the site folder size is halved and now loads more quickly.

Functionality

The site contains more features than in the previous version. Our goal was to add useful rather than cosmetic functionality. We believe that we’ve succeeded.

• Selected tables are sortable
• Designated links execute a tooltip on mouseover
• All primary pages have a site search box and text-sizing functionality
• Visual cues to filetype proceed selected links
• Layout is fluid and conforms to different screen resolutions
• Email links are encrypted as a SPAM fighting measure

This site was produced internally using code and applications freely available on the web. Over the next few weeks we will work on fixing a few lingering glitches and to make additional improvements relating to standards compliance, speed and accessibility. Our goal is to have a site that can serve as a model for excellent learning center web design. We also intend to make the resources that were used in creating this site available on our blog. Please share your opinion from our contacts page.

New Blog Platform

This blog started out as a resource for students but has meandered for a while and has become a bit of a nonstarter. Since I believe a need exists, I have decided to re-purpose it as a technology blog. Legacy posts will remain but the blog template and perhaps platform will change to better facilitate this new purpose. Features will include web design tutorials and video demonstrations of electronics and technology fixes useful to learning and writing center staff. The emphasis will be on the free and the cheap but selected commercial items that are especially useful will also be featured.

Tutortrac/Learning Center Mashup

Students don’t distinguish between the Learning Center and Tutortrac. In their minds it’s one and the same. For this reason, where Tutortrac goes so does the Learning Center. It’s incumbent then for the Learning Center to be as involved in the development of Tutortrac as is possible. This thinking leads me to consider existing and ideal models for application development. It seems to me that the manufacturing model that consigns the user’s role mostly to signing for a receipt upon delivery is increasingly being abandoned for a more fertile and participatory end-user assisted development process. This latter process involves the user in every aspect of the development phase. The downside is a possible longer development time on the back end and the need to facilitate expert/non-expert communications, which is not always easy. The benefits would be an application with a better fit-for-use in both form and function. Greater buy-in from users and fewer calls for product modifications. It seems to me that one aspect of this shift to a modern application design model is the increasingly ubiquitous developer blog, eg., (1), (2). These blogs serve not only to keep users up-to-date on work being done on an application, but also humanizes the people and process of application design, which may seem mysterious to the uninitiated. Photoblogs are especially useful in this regard, eg., (3).