PSLC DataShop

Friday, 5 April 2013

DataShop 6.2 released - upload datasets, project access enhancements, and more

With today's update to DataShop, we've made another big step toward allowing you to import datasets directly. You can now upload a file to be imported into DataShop, as well as create and manage projects and files-only datasets. All progress on the import of your datasets will be shown in the Import Queue at the top of My Datasets.

Upload datasets

Two new items in the main navigation under My Data—Upload a dataset and Create a project—allow you to get started adding new data to DataShop. You can create a dataset with or without transaction data. Transaction data is data that is in either of the two formats DataShop accepts (XML and tab-delimited). More info about these formats can be found in our help.

After you upload a dataset with transaction data, you'll see it in the new Import Queue on the My Datasets page. Information about the file format verification and import status (such as estimated import date) will be shown in the queue and emailed to you.

Manage project access directly

On each project page in DataShop you'll see an updated Permissions tab. If you are a project admin for that project, you can now see the list of people who have access to your project, modify that access, and grant access to new users directly by entering their username (in addition to responding to requests for access). An access report for that project is also available.

New "condition" column in the student-problem export

The "condition" column is now also included in the student-problem export, in addition to the transaction and student-step exports.

Access Report optimizations

The Access Report, which shows who has accessed your projects and what their permissions are, has been optimized to be much faster. You can view the main Access Report on the Access Requests page.

Thursday, 4 April 2013

DataShop downtime for release of v6.2

DataShop is going to be down for 1-5 hours beginning at 6am EST on Friday, April 5, 2013 while our servers are being updated for the new release.

Thursday, 24 January 2013

DataShop 6.1 released - new navigation, error bars, improved project pages, and more

Revised home page and navigation

The latest version of DataShop has a new navigation section along the left-hand side of the application. We've grouped together things that are specific to your account—your datasets, access requests, and profile—under the heading My Data. My Datasets now appears under this heading, while Public Datasets and Private Datasets (renamed from Other Datasets) appear under the heading Explore. We have also removed the login box in favor of the login page. (To log in, just click the "Log in" button.)

Error Bars in Learning Curves

Turn on error bars on a learning curve by clicking the "Error Bars" checkbox in the navigation. You can choose between error bars that represent one standard deviation or one standard error.

New project pages and subtabs

A project in DataShop is a way to group together datasets and specify who has permissions to those datasets. In this release, the project page has new fields for a project description (what are these datasets about?), tags (words describing the project or its data), and external links (links to a research page, wiki, or anything else). You can view your current permission level for a project from the new "Permissions" subtab. "Terms of Use" has been moved to its own subtab.

With this new project page, more information will be capable of being captured and indexed, making pages more intelligible to both researchers and Google search.

Revised permissions

In addition the the existing project access levels of "edit" and "view", we've added a third—"admin". A project admin has full control over a project and its datasets. This role will be even more useful when we've added the ability to upload datasets. We've created a table to show the difference between the three roles. As of this release, if you were a PI for a project, you are now also its admin.

IRB management

Another addition to the project page is a subtab called "IRB" (visible if you are the project admin for a project). When you add a dataset to DataShop, you must complete a few steps on the IRB subtab of your project page. These requirements, specified in the latest IRB for DataShop and on our help page, apply to all datasets added to DataShop after April 2012. Included in these are requirements for what you must do before being allowed to use DataShop to share data outside of your immediate research team. More information about this process is available on our help page.

Change to Performance Profiler controls

We've added controls for changing the X and Y axes to the navigation area. The existing controls, which can be accessed by positioning your cursor over the X and Y axis labels, are still available.

Tweaks to access requests and the access report

We made the following changes related to access requests and the access report:

• We fixed a bug that was prompting users to agree to project terms for projects they didn't have access to but were only browsing.
• New columns in the exportable access report show more information about the last action of the data provider, PI, or DataShop admin.
• If a project has both a PI and data provider and one of the two approves access, the PI or data provider that responded will not be notified again if the user re-requests access, nor will she be asked to approve access again.
• A PI or data provider responding to a request for access can now choose to share the reason they enter with the requester. This is the default, as most people were using this feature as if the text they entered was being sent to the requester.

Monday, 21 January 2013

DataShop Downtime for Scheduled Maintenance

DataShop is going to be down for 4 hours beginning at 8am EST on Thursday, January 24, 2013 while our servers are being updated for the new release.

Friday, 16 November 2012

New video on Bayesian Knowledge Tracing posted

We've posted a new video on our YouTube channel in which Michael Yudelson demos a tool he wrote that can fit Bayesian Knowledge Tracing models quickly and easily using data exported from DataShop. The tool can be downloaded from DataShop or from his website.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

DataShop tutorial videos on YouTube

We've started a YouTube channel for DataShop tutorial videos and added two new videos to it. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Thursday, 1 November 2012

DataShop Downtime for Hardware Upgrade, Friday November 2nd

DataShop will be down starting at 8am EST on Friday, November 2, 2012. The DataShop team will be switching the DataShop web application to new hardware during this time, resulting in an expected downtime of roughly one hour. A longer downtime of 24 hours is possible. Logging to DataShop over the web will not be affected, as that service is hosted by a different server. We expect the web application's performance to be much improved as a result of the new hardware.

Thursday, 11 October 2012

DataShop 6.0 released - A new repository of external tools, public dataset metadata, and an external analyses web service

External Tools repository

On the DataShop home page, you'll notice a new tab—External Tools. We created this repository to facilitate the sharing of software tools related to learning data. If you have such a tool and are interested in sharing it, we encourage you to contribute it. You'll be able to include a description of the tool, what language it was written in, a link to the tool's homepage if one exists, and any files you would like DataShop to host.

Even if your software project already has a homepage or uses a source code repository (like GitHub), consider adding information about your tool here so that others can find it; you don't need to host the software in two places, although you might consider putting only the binary, downloadable files here. We'll also keep track of and display the number of downloads for you.

We expect this repository to grow over the coming weeks and months, so please bookmark the page.

View dataset info (metadata) pages for all datasets in DataShop

It's often difficult to tell if a dataset is relevant to you from the information on the DataShop homepage. More metadata exists on the Dataset Info tab of the dataset, but that information has been hidden from view if you didn't have access to that dataset. We've changed this so that you can now browse the dataset info of any dataset in DataShop, even if it's currently private. (The rest of the dataset is still private, as are the "School" and "Additional Notes" fields on the Dataset Info page.)

To see how this works, take a look at the Dataset Info page of any of the private datasets in DataShop. You might see a description of the software system that students used, a link to a wiki page describing the research outcomes, or other information that might prompt you to request access to that project.

If you're the PI of a project, consider putting more contextual information on the Dataset Info tab of your datasets. Other researchers might find your dataset and offer to explore or analyze it. You'll see the box to the right to remind you that the page is public.

Also, you'll now see this dataset metadata included in the README file of any datasets you export.

Login improvements

We've made a number of tweaks to the way logging in works and looks. One of the nicest changes is that if you follow a link to a page in DataShop but you're not logged in, you will now be forwarded to that page after logging in.

External analyses web service

In May of this year, we added the ability to upload and share analyses of a dataset—external analyses is the name of the Files subtab. But what if you create many such analyses across many datasets using a data-mining program? We've created a web service (the first of its kind, for DataShop) that allows you post an external analysis to a dataset through code. You can also retrieve external analyses through the web service as well. To learn more about how to do this, see our web services help page and updated API doc.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

DataShop Downtime for Scheduled Maintenance

DataShop is going to be down for 3 hours beginning at 9pm EST on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 while our servers are being updated.

Friday, 1 June 2012

Video of John Stamper's presentation at LAK12 posted

We've posted a link on our presentations page to John Stamper's presentation (video + slides) at the International Conference on Learning Analytics Knowledge 2012 (LAK12) as part of a panel titled “Educational Data Mining meets Learning Analytics”.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

DataShop 5.3 released - Request and grant access to projects within DataShop, share external analyses

Request and grant access to projects within DataShop

We've added the ability to request and grant access to projects. Click the "Request Access" button next to the title of any private project.

In the dialog that appears, enter a reason why you want access. Your request will be sent to the PI of the project for approval. You can check on the status of your request from the "Access Requests" page.

As a PI, you can manage requests for access to your projects on the "Access Requests" page. With each response, you can enter a message for your records that is not shared with the requester. Your decision will be emailed to the requester and shown in their "Access Requests" page.

PIs also have the ability to view and export an "access report" that lists all people who have ever had access to your project(s).

New "Files" tab and external analyses

The "Files" subtab in DataShop has been moved to a more prominent location, and the functionality and usability has been improved. There are now three main sub-categories of files: papers, files, and a new type, external analyses.

When you upload an external analysis to share, you can select a relevant KC model and enter the name of a statistical model used in the generation of your analysis. Both fields are optional.

The usability of all three file categories has been improved. Tables are now sortable by their various columns, and the upload process has been simplified as a dialog.

Options to edit your account profile and reset your password

It's now possible to more easily update your account information, change your password, or reset your password if you've forgotten it. To update your account or change your password, click your username in the upper-right corner after logging in.

Bug fixes

We fixed a number of bugs for this release, but a couple of the more visible ones:

• Fixed a bug where the help window would appear with the message "No help is available for this page" upon first loading DataShop.
• Fixed a bug that caused new account creation to fail.

Monday, 16 April 2012

Automated detectors of affect and disengaged behaviors

Ryan Baker and his team have developed automated detectors of affect and disengaged behaviors that can be applied to DataShop data sets from Cognitive Tutor Algebra and Cognitive Tutor Geometry. They are happy to apply these detectors to DataShop data sets for any researcher who is interested. For more information, please contact Ryan Baker.

Friday, 10 February 2012

DataShop downtime

We are experiencing some unexpected hardware issues with one of our servers, which has caused DataShop to be unavailable. We are hoping to have DataShop back online by 3pm EST today. We will post more information here as it becomes available.

Update-1 on Friday, Feb 10, 2012, 3:00pm EST: We are still experiencing hardware issues with one of our servers. The current estimate is to have DataShop back online by 3pm EST on Monday, February 13, 2012. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Friday, 20 January 2012

DataShop 5.2 released - DataShop terms of use, project pages, PIs, and bug fixes

Terms of Use

DataShop now has a terms of use, which you will be asked to agree to next time you sign in. The terms say in plain language many of the things that we generally communicated over time—for example, that data is for research purposes.

Project pages and PIs

To make the concept of a "project" clearer, we've created project pages for each project in DataShop, which are linked to from the My/Public/Other Datasets tabs. For now, a project page lists the datasets in that project and the principal investigator's name, but in the future, it could hold much more information (papers and files, for example).

As part of this change, we've also moved the principal investigator (PI) field from the dataset to the project. There is now one PI for each project in DataShop.

Minor changes

KC Models subtab. You will notice a new "KC Models" subtab beneath the main "Learning Curve" tab. This is the same page as the one currently below "Dataset Info"; we've just added a link to it so that you can move between KC Models, Line Graph, and Model Values more easily.

Importing inputs greater than 255 characters. For new data where a value in the "Input" column is greater than 255 characters, DataShop will split the text into multiple "Input" columns, each no greater than 255 characters.

Bug fixes. We've made various bug fixes to the code that determines the Problem View and Problem Start Time columns from raw data.