A few posts back I asked for some help to Convince Curmudgeons with Comments — this is in reference to a few vocal critics of our online report tool for a faculty summer project professional growth program who did not want copies of their projects to be cross listed in our Maricopa Learning eXchange.
As is the reports themselves are about 4 clicks in from the main professional growth site to the Examples of Summer projects where likely few web explorers might venture; also the value that the MLX adds over just a response to a handful of questions is the ability to attach relevant web sites and upload supplementary media files which can be attached.
For example, Donna Gaudet’s project on Online Community and Retention Research has a static report on the FPG web site (response to the report form questions) while her MLX package has the same responses plus her three word files that have all the resources she compiled. Or compare Geoff Eroe’s report on his project Complex Modeling and Animation Techniques for Character Studio and 3D Studio Max to the MLX package that includes an AVI file of one of his animation sequences. And Niccole Cerveny’s Rock Art Research in the Field and Laboratory has a basic report but the MLX package includes web links to related web sites such as the local Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
Isn’t that worth something?
So the deadline for filing the online project reports passed on September 30… so we had lots of calls the afternoon of September 30th when the bulk of the reports came in to our database. And we did rather well, out of 110 projects funded, we have 90 reports submitted and electronically approved by our college reps.
Now here another great part- we automatically associate these MLX entries with a common identifier, a system tag if you will, so they can be grouped as a hole into what we call an MLX special collection for Faculty Professional Growth Summer Projects which lists 98 total projects (8 from last year when the online tools were still in beta). This one URL can be used to dynamically link to the most recent sum of all MLX items in this collection plus there is an RSS feed for the newest ones in the collection or a feed for a random selection that could potentially be used on a web page that could highlight random packages within this group.
That seems pretty valuable to have as a collection?
Well today I went into the dusty vault of the MLX code and added a new feature that allows a keyword search within a special collection, e.g. all MLX packages in the Summer Projects collection that contain the word “assessment”.
That should be useful to someone.
So again, if any is interested in helping convince the stubborn ones who think this is not valuable, pick one of these packages, and send a comment. A copy is emailed to the package owner. There is nothing like a little pat on the back, a massaging of an ego, to help people see the value of putting their work in public.
And I am jazzed to get back to some MLX coding. The big project is to streamline the original version from its year vintage 2000 design to the new look of what will be the open source version.
Finally left a comment, Alan, on the “master teacher” package. I applaud your project, and theirs.
Quick tech observation. Once I left my comment and hit “submit,” I ended up at another comment page inviting comments for the “author of the package.” Not knowing the MLX nomenclature well, I ended up confused and left another comment. The confused comment then appeared on the main page, with the substantive comment now in the “read more” area.
This part of the process wasn’t so intuitive. 🙂
Thanks for the observation; we can easily change it so ir is either just an ackknowledgement of receipt. I am working in some re-structure/ re-programming of MLX, so this is handy to know.
I was able to delete the second comment and restore your actual one. The email notifications that go to package “owners” include an encrypted URl they can use to delete or hide a comment from appearing.
Thanks also for providing the nice note to th eperson that created the item you were looking at– I know it will be appreciated.