BAM
Contents |
What is BAM
BAM stands for Blog Aggregation Management.
BAM is a collection of Perl scripts integrated into CQU's institutional systems which aggregates a collection of RSS feeds (usually from blogs used by individual students) and provides a management interface that can be used by CQU staff to view and mark student posts. The results are able to be imported directly into CQU's student administration systems.
An original assumption in the design of BAM was that it would be used mostly as a mechanism to support the use of individual student reflective journals.
How has it been used
BAM was first used in T2, 2006 in the CQU course COIS20025, Systems Development Overview and has been used every term since then for that course. The course COIS12073, Enterprise Systems used BAM in T2, 2007. As of late 2008 BAM has been used by 1000+ CQU students in 13 different course offerings.
BAM has also been used in the course EDED11448, Creating Futuring to aggregate and create the student portfolios and weblogs.
How does it work
Configuration
- BAM is configured for a particular course.
- This usually involves providing the course code, assignment title and the list of questions the students will respond to on their blogs. The questions are optional. But if provided BAM will attempt to automatically allocate student blog posts to specific questions based on the content. This helps staff track and observe which students have answered which questions. The questions also provide some scaffolding.
Students and their blogs
This screencast is designed to walk students through the process of creating, registering and using their blog with BAM and Wordpress.com. There is also a document showing the process (for those with slow internet connections). The document is available as a Word document and as a PDF file.
- Students create their individual blog on some external blog provider (Wordpress is the current recommended service).
- To learn about what a blog is take a look at the Blogs in Plain English video. The assumption is that a blog owned by the student provides a sense of ownership. A private place for them to post their thoughts.
- Students register their blog with BAM by logging into a page and copying in the URL of their blog.
- Having each student own a blog could make it very difficult for teaching staff to track what is going on. BAM brings these blogs together and provides a management interface for staff.
- This is done by students logging into a standard web page using their CQU student credentials for their course. The web page asks the student to enter the URL of the blog they have just created. The script url is http://webfuse.cqu.edu.au/wf/object/BamRegister?COURSE=coursecode&PERIOD=period&YEAR=year&A_TITLE=a_title where the words on the right hand side of the equals signs are replaced by the appropriate CQU values (e.g. COIS20025 T2 2006 Item_1).
- A screencast is available that shows the registration process and includes a voice over. The screencast can only be viewed by CQUni staff.
- Students now forget about BAM and use their blog.
Aggregation, allocation and mirroring of blogs
- BAM regularly (every hour or so) "mirrors" (i.e. maintains a copy of all the content) each students blog
- BAM uses the RSS feed generated by each students blog to keep a copy of all content on a CQU computer. For more information about RSS take a look at the RSS in Plain English video
- BAM allocates posts.
- BAM examines the content of each student post. If appears to match a question that students are required to answer, BAM will automatically allocate that post to that question. This is done by looking at the title and content of the post. If the post title matches the question title, or the content of the post contains some of the content of the question, then it is considered a match.
Academic staff management of BAM
- Academic staff use the BAM management interface to view and possibly mark their students blogs
- The BAM Manage link is available from StaffMyCQU.
- A screencast is available that shows the BAM management interface, it includes a voice over. The screencast can only be viewed by CQUni staff.
- At the end of term the blog results are integrated into CQU's results processing system.
- Currently this is done by running a script that takes results for each blog post from BAM, totals them up and inserts them into the OASIS system. From there the results will appear in the final CSV coordinators start with as part of the results upload process.
Release of markers comments
Markers are able to comment and grade each student comment. This information can be shown to a student via a web page once the comment/grade has been released.
What needs to happen
- Students need to be told about the web link
- The link is http://webfuse.cqu.edu.au/wf/object/BamStudent/?COURSE={COURSE}&PERIOD={PERIOD}&YEAR={YEAR} where the labels within braces need to be replaced with appropriate values (e.g. COIS20025 T2 2009). Most courses place this link somewhere on the course website. Students can use this link to see what information is available on their blog.
- Markers have to mark the posts
- The marked posts need to be released.
- To do this you need to email David Jones with the details of what you want released (e.g. which questions, which students)
How to resources
The following videos give a great introduction to blogs and RSS, two fundamental technologies the BAM uses. Useful pre-requiste knowledge
The local "how tos" include:
- BAM's interface is primarily to mark student contributions. If you want to participate more with the students and their blogs it's best to use a news reader.
There is also a collection of BAM frequently asked questions.
Other resources
There are a collection of other BAM resources, including:
- The initial BAM project page.
- Which contains a range of information about the rationale and original design for BAM. Includes a couple of presentations on BAM including slides and audio.
- An article published in late 2006 which describes the original use of BAM.
- A section of ELI's Guide to Blogging described the initial use of BAM.
- Example descriptions of assignments using BAM that have been provided to students in courses that using BAM: COIS12073 and COIS20025 (you may see some similarity).
More information and support
If you want more information, take a look at the BAM project page or please contact David Jones.
All support in using BAM is provided by David Jones.
