[Sugar-devel] FUDCon hackfest proposal: assessment

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

>> Is there any interest in figuring out how assessments might work in a 
>> Sugar activity API?
>>
>> Teachers frequently talk about the need to assess the progress of their 
>> pupils.  In the context of an activity, how do teachers do that?  I 
>> don't think there's a clear mechanism, and I suspect that constructing 
>> such a mechanism might be simple.  I believe that such a feature might 
>> also help make a case for usefulness to teachers.
>>
>> A few points/assumptions:
>>
>> 0. I'm guessing there will be some simple API, maybe 
>> "sugar.activity.assess".  Or maybe it's actually part of datastore.  I 
>> don't know the code well enough.  :)
>>
>> 1. I assume there will be a server that can collect this data, maybe
>> Moodle, maybe not.  Something like...
>>   * Activity is suspended.
>>   * Assessment data is written to datastore.
>>   * Some process reaps recent assessment data periodically and syncs to
>> server if possible, or fails gracefully if not, storing for future sync.
>>
>> 2. I believe that every activity should be able to report the most 
>> basic assessment metric, which is "time spent in an activity".  For 
>> young students, time spent in an activity is one of the most reliable 
>> predictors of mastery, and because that data can surely be collected 
>> automatically, it should be made available automatically.
>>
>> 3. I believe that it should be possible for an activity to specify 
>> additional, simple assessment.  This could be quite a rathole, but an 
>> initial possibility could be "score/max score" and timestamp.
>>
>> So one can imagine an activity passing along data that might look 
>> something like this:
>>
>> gregdek, mongo, rectangle-quest-1, 18/20, timestamp 08:31:44.
>> gregdek, mongo, rectangle-quest-2, 11/20, timestamp 08:52:08.
>> gregdek, mongo, time-in-activity, 23 minutes, timestamp 09:04:56.
>>
>> Is this an interesting idea?  If so, I'd love to sit down with folks at 
>> the hackfest at LinuxTag and draw up a spec for how it might be 
>> implemented.
>
> I think it's very interesting and have heard from several people similar 
> interest: GCompris, OLPC Austria, IFL (TeacherMate), etc
>
> Will be great to talk about it in LT, maybe we could hold a session in 
> the sugar booth?
>
> Or better sunday as a FUDCon session?

I have scheduled two hackfest sessions at FUDCon.

1st session, Friday afternoon, from 2pm to 4pm.  The goal is to get people 
together, discuss the goal (spec for sharing assessment data) and get a 
wide range of ideas.

2nd session, Sunday from 10am onwards, will be hacking to get some of this 
idea implemented.

Simon, Tony and I are all planning to be there.  I hope we can get lots of 
other folks there too, from various projects.

--g

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