Meeting Notes for 17 December 2008 Old Business Helpdesk Form Location Of QuarkNet server e-Lab Fellows Forum Location Still problem with SSH keys. Date and Topics of ELabs Meeting Phong's Report Pretest/Posttest Implementing Production and Development Pretest How to get students to take the posttest? Alan Wehmann’s documentation "ND Shower bug" from Last Week

Meeting Notes for 17 December 2008

Present: Tom J. , Tom L.,Mihael, Eric, Liz, Phong, Bob
Absent: Dan K.

Old Business

Helpdesk Form

Eric announced that the helpdesk form is back up on www13, but not on 18 yet. Bob reported that www13 helpdesk form is down. Eric will fix it. Init script that is supposed to run every morning. The proxy for the e-Labs is not working. We reiterated that www13 is a good testing ground for seeing if Tomcat and Apache can coexist.

Location Of QuarkNet server

Last week we discussed whether the QuarkNet server would stay on www10 permanently. Liz had the action item to ask Marge whether she expected the QuarkNet site to reside on the cluster. She mentioned to Marge that we are setting a precedent for all e-Labs if we put the QuarkNet website on the ELabs cluster. Marge thinks that if we need more servers, ELabs should buy the hardware. QuarkNet does not have the money for it.

e-Lab Fellows Forum Location

Bob was to ask the Fellows whether they thought it should be on the QuarkNet or ELabs site.; he did not get to this, but we decided not bother them and postpone to decision to the January meeting. Liz suggested that we could cross link them and people would not need to know whether they were on one site or the other. They would accessible from both.

Still problem with SSH keys.

We seemed to have different experiences with logging onto www13. Some people thought www13 wants an SSH key. The SSH key needs to be put on www13 because of upgrade. Others were able to use the username/password to log on to www13. It should not require an SSH key and one-time username/password. Tom sent info on his trying to log on.

Action item: Phong is going to try to understand how to get on www13 and document it in the wiki.

Date and Topics of ELabs Meeting

• Jan 7-8 is the best date for everyone. Bob will have to disappear during part of it to work with the students from Maywood. Dan has morning meeting on 7th, but he can do it from Fermilab.
• Focus on deadlines (priority #1)
• Money for Tom L. and Eric, but not Dan K.; Dan’s ok.
• ELabs portal – something like QuarkNet portal on www10. We will have to test this.
• Wiki spot for discussion on topics for the meeting.
• Do we have money for Dale to participate. Maybe it depends on what we are focusing on.

Action item: Liz will start a topic on the wiki.

Note: after the telecon in a discussion with Marge in e-mail, it be became clear that our view of the ELabs meeting was different than Marge's. We were thinking it involved the members of the technical group and Jean, but not the full collaboration including the i-Lab people and PIs. We will have to resolve this.

Phong's Report

Phong is hobbled by having to use public work stations. Waylon says his machine can come in today. 15” MacBook Pro; Phong would like to set up his Mac so he can do his development and testing on it; Tom has been wanting to do this for a long time and requested he document it. Liz wants to be sure this does not take too much of his time to set up when he can work effectively by rsyncing to www13.

Pretest/Posttest

Implementing Production and Development Pretest

We discussed how we should test the new pretest and maintain the current pretest. Putting it on a server will make it easier to gather the data. Jean and Tom had discussed doing it on paper.

• Implement multiple pretests with different names
• Keep the current one on production and set up the one to be tested on www13. It uses a different database.
• Use SurveyMonkey if it supports having images or else send students the images.

How to get students to take the posttest?

We had various ideas on this.

• Tom L: You cannot publish the poster until you take the posttest. They don’t get their grade.
• Those who are involved in the study this summer will be told that they have to do it.
• Dan K. - Find a parallel in the research world, e.g., you don’t get on the author list in CMS unless you do service work. We would have to introduce a difference between saving and publishing.
• Hold money from teachers who don't make sure their students finish the process by taking the posttest.
• Pinging the teacher every week that their students have not taken the test.
• Discuss this with Jean. She and her team have experience with this. They need it for the evaluation

Related to this we discussed the logbook and how it provides information about progress. Eric reiterated his opinion that what we call a logbook is not really a logbook. It is more like a workbook. Students should put a link in the logbook to their poster when they have finished that milestone.

Another question is how do we separate out those research groups that are involved in the testing; isn’t Jean wanting only to only look at them? Would we need an additional column in the database indicating whether the research group was in the study.

Alan Wehmann’s documentation

We decided that we want to have him describe what he is doing on documentation for Perl code during the ELabs meeting instead of a telecon.

"ND Shower bug" from Last Week

Tom J. – they are still trying to understand if the problem Tom L. uncovered is corrected by the firmware.

-- Main.LizQuigg - 20 Dec 2008