The people who make CEOHP happen: Students
This page introduces undergraduate students who have been part of the Computing Educators Oral History Project in various capacities.
Fall 2010: Archival Planning, Southwestern University
In Fall 2010, Leigh Daniel, an undergraduate computer science student at Southwestern University, joined CEOHP to assist in the process of organizing all materials in anticipation of permanent archival. She dealt with issues related to paper artefacts, electronic artefacts, and trade-offs for how these materials should be organized. She joined Dr. Barbara Owens and Dr. Vicki Almstrum for a visit to the Institute of Oral History at Baylor University in October 2010.
Fall 2007: Transcription assistance, Southwestern University
In Fall 2007, Emily Jenkins, an undergraduate computer science student at Southwestern University, transcribed several interviews for the CEOHP collection. Her efforts helped simplify the effort of moving interviews collected during that period from audio to the corresponding transcript version.
Spring 2007: Senior Seminar in Software Engineering, Southwestern University
Background
In Spring 2007, Dr. Vicki Almstrum served as an adjunct professor for the Senior Seminar in Software Engineering at Southwestern University. Nine students learned about software engineering principles while exploring the needs for a project such as CEOHP when set up as a web portal.
Dr. Barbara Boucher Owens served as the client for the course, meeting periodically with the student subteams to convey the requirements and answer the students’ questions. Near the end of the semester, the three student groups prepared a poster presentation for the annual Southwestern University Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Symposium.
The administration group
Student design team focused on CEOHP administration issues: John Davis, Chris Scott, and Nathan Lindzey
Managing Memories: The Computer Educators Oral History Project Administration and Content Management Systems
An oral history project is a collection of accounts from individuals, either about themselves or about others, detailing life experiences and personal histories. The Computer Science capstone class is creating a prototype of the web portal for an online oral history project in the field of computing education. This poster highlights the project’s administration and content management tools.
The administration and content management subsystem the Computing Educators Oral History Project (CEOHP) web portal demonstrates the principles of accessible user interface design, data security, and easy, intuitive content management and software maintenance. In all these areas the system will present the administrator or content manager with an interface that can be understood and used effectively without the need for extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the system. The learning curve must be as gentle as possible and allow an administrator to work effectively very quickly.
Accessible user interfaces should be not only easy to use and intuitive, but also fully functional for those with access restrictions, including the visually impaired and those who use alternative methods to interact with a computer system. Accessible user interfaces include techniques and strategies for making information easy to access and use for every user, whether visitors or administrators. This includes print-friendly presentation of information and an easy way to track when and how the portal has been updated.
Data security will be put into place to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and areas. This includes implementing a thorough and rigorous set of security protocols as well as a tiered user system, with varying privilege levels as appropriate. Content management and maintenance, a critical area, includes creating, editing and deleting information, as well as ensuring everything is frequently backed up and in good working order.
The content group
Student design team focused on CEOHP administration issues: Dan Parker, Hillari Tiedeman, and Aaron Conterras
From Words to Webpage: Presenting Oral Histories Online
An oral history project is a collection of accounts from individuals, either about themselves or about others, detailing life experiences and personal histories. The Computer Science capstone class is creating a prototype of the web portal for an online oral history project in the field of computing education. In this poster, we will highlight the processes involved with turning an individual?s story on audio file into something that can be easily accessed on the web portal. Among the ideas we will be focusing on are processing and collection use. Processing involves many aspects, but the main goal is to create a transcript of the interview and tag it appropriately to allow users to search within the text. Once processing is complete, it is necessary to arrange the information so that any user, no matter their reasons for searching the web portal, can easily find the information they need.
The evaluation group
Student design team focused on CEOHP evaluation issues: Jamonn Little, Ty Mitschtke, and David Luna
Spreading Stories with Efficiency and Aesthetics: The Evaluation of an Online Oral History Collection
An oral history project is a collection of accounts from individuals, either about themselves or about others, detailing life experiences and personal histories. The Computer Science capstone class is creating a prototype of the web portal for an online oral history project in the field of computing education. In this poster, we will highlight how the project will provide tools for on- going evaluation of three aspects of web portal quality: content quality, quality of accessibility, and profiling web usage.
Content quality includes a range of issues, from proper grammar to completeness of background information on each interview, such as date, location, name of interviewee, and name of interviewer. The search functions of the collection’s database must produce sufficient and relevant results, as well as operate in a time-efficient manner. This also includes on-going evaluation of the content in the collection to ensure that it is balanced in terms of key factors such as gender, ethnicity, and nationality.
Quality of accessibility includes issues such as ensuring that all hyperlinks function properly and that page design adheres to the guidelines outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium. Content should be usable in some form by all users, including those with special accessibility needs. The web portal must be compatible with the most popular internet browsers, as well as a range of media players.
Profiling web portal use will be vital as the collection grows and evolves, for the purpose of understanding visitor profiles. By collecting detailed statistics, for example number of visitors, geographic distribution of visitors, time spent on each page, and users’ search paths, the project will have a means for analyzing the site so that content can be delivered to users in the best way possible.