[Building Sakai] NeoChat for production use?

Steve Swinsburg steve.swinsburg at gmail.com
Sat Feb 23 01:12:10 PST 2013 

Maybe the instructor could go into site info and click a button to disable portal chat for all users of the site. And that would carry the setting everywhere they went until reenabled, no chat for those users until reenabled. 

The portal could show a message saying portal chat is disabled. Or just not show it. 

That would solve the problem of collaborating during an online test. 

Cheers
Steve

Gesendent von meinem iPhone

On 22/02/2013, at 20:24, Pablo San Roman Bengoetxea <pablo.sanroman at unavarra.es> wrote:

> Exactly, I am "suggesting that a student may have connected with a 
> helpful friend who is NOT currently in the class but can still aid them 
> during a test", and i add, this friend could also be in the same class. 
> Chuck's approach may be the solution, I agree with you. We have not 
> lockdown browser at this time, however we will test it in the future.
> 
> Keli, I admire your fat finger !  :)
> 
> Thanks you all!
> 
> 
> 21/02/2013 20:41(e)an, Keli Amann(e)k idatzi zuen:
>> Oops was trying to edit this from my phone and sent prematurely. I was going to add that Dr Chuck's idea with letting lockdown browsers block chat might be better than allowing instructors to block all chat because short of disabling chat with connections campus wide, there may not be another option.
>> 
>> Okay I'm going to stop before I fat finger again! ;-p there's a lot to think through and I am sure others have things to add.
>> 
>> Keli
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Feb 21, 2013, at 11:15 AM, Keli Amann <kamann at stanford.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Pablo
>>> At Stanford, online testing is actually limited to specific schools ( medicine and languages)  that have the facilities and computers to accommodate their students. We have no other test center for mass computer based testing. None of these schools actually use a lockdown browser so far (though our language center testing area whitelists only our sakai installation) and they seem to have enough staff on hand at test time to discourage cheating. Technically, staff is there as technical assistance because our honor code does not allow instructors to closely monitor any test, but perhaps it is enough. I filed these JIRAs more because I saw this concern raised on the list a few months back so I'm raising it on their behalf. I hope they will respond to the JIRAs if so. Even if there is no high stakes testing at an institution, schools may want the option to experiment with chat before turning it across the campus so SAK-23258 would help with that and spur uptake of portal chat.
>>> 
>>> I was also somewhat concerned about students still being able to chat with classmates that they had connected with, but I haven't filed a JIRA. For one, we are not ready to turn on profile2 so it won't be an immediate issue for us.. If you are suggesting that a student may have  connected with a helpful friend who is NOT currently in the class but can still aid them during a test, that is trickier. An instructor would have no control of that. I notice Dr Chuck seems to have some other ideas about blocking all chat using the lockdown browser
>>> 
>>> However it seems like
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>> On Feb 21, 2013, at 2:12 AM, Pablo San Roman Bengoetxea <pablo.sanroman at unavarra.es> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Keli
>>>> I guess you're assuming that you are using a browser crash program to complete the exam, like Respondus Lockdown Browser?  If not, any student can communicate with his Connections in PortalChat from anywhere, including MyWorkspace (although the PortalChat of the site of the examination is locked). Am I right?
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Regards!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 21/02/2013 2:07(e)an, Keli Sato Amann(e)k idatzi zuen:
>>>>> Hi Adrian,
>>>>> Thanks, these are now filed as follows, with the component "portal chat" ;-).
>>>>> 
>>>>> SAK-23258-Add ability to remove ability of students to use portal chat from particular sites
>>>>> 
>>>>> SAK-23259-Allow institutions to remove certain roles, such as guests, from inclusion in the portal chat
>>>>> 
>>>>> PRFL-802 - "who can see my status" and "who can see my online status" are confusing
>>>>> 
>>>>> Note that SAK-23258 was named "Add ability to remove portal chat from particular sites" but then I thought that perhaps it was only disabling students ability to chat, not everyone that was actually desired. I think that's up for debate and folks can weigh in on the JIRA.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Keli
>>>>> 
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Adrian Fish" <adrian.r.fish at gmail.com>
>>>>> To: "Keli Sato Amann" <kamann at stanford.edu>
>>>>> Cc: "sakai-dev" <sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org>
>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 1:07:42 PM
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] NeoChat for production use?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Some superb points there, Keli. Could you possibly JIRA the particular things mentioned, like disabling floating chat by site? There's a component for portal chat at https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK/component/11412 .
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> There's yet another name for the floating chat: portal chat. Which one do folk prefer?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Floating chat
>>>>> Portal chat
>>>>> Neo chat
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm thinking Portal chat myself ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Adrian.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 19 February 2013 19:32, Keli Sato Amann < kamann at stanford.edu > wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> Neochat looks like something that might be useful to people struggling with a problem set who want to know if someone in their class is up at 2AM working on a problem set and can help, or if the instructor wants a back channel in a large lecture for questions. However, I seem to recall some thread a few months back citing concern about students over-collaborating (aka cheating) during timed online tests. Unlike a chat room, the instructor has no visibility into what's being said and can't remove the ability of students to talk to others in their class. Also, we are are in the process of disabling the ability of those with a guest role to see tools that show who is in the class because we are concerned about FERPA (Forums and Wiki for now, and if we start using them more, Messages, Chat Room, and Roster).
>>>>> 
>>>>> These concerns, more than the fact that we have slightly more than 15,000 student installations, is what is going to hold us back from taking the plunge. If we ever do jump in, I think we would need to do the following first:
>>>>> 1) Give instructors and admins the ability to remove the chat feature selectively from particular sites (is this possible by letting instructors change skin?) And possibly, to prevent chatting with My connections and/or develop a tool to show whether two people are chatting (don't think we need to see the content of the chat) in case there is some sort of investigation.
>>>>> 2) Remove guests from inclusion in the chat.
>>>>> 3) To better protect privacy by making options clear, I would suggest renaming "who can see my online status" to "who can see if I'm online?" and moving it above "who can see my status" so the two are not confused. And does "everyone" for online status really mean everyone or just those who are in my classes and clubs? Might rename that option to "members of my sites" just for "who can see my online status"
>>>>> 
>>>>> Barring that, the two scenarios I described above could also be met by the Chat Room alone. Neochat would allow students to ask questions directly to the instructor without letting other students see the question and neochat makes it easier to stumble upon other people who are online, because you could be in another part of the site. However, it would start getting harder to manage if more than 4 students ask a question, since new names pop up along the bottom, so maybe chat room is better.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, I wonder if anyone has any *other* use cases for neochat? I could see this being used more socially than anything else, so it might change the nature of Sakai use on your campus, causing people to stay logged in longer. I imagine that if schools wanted to experiment, they might create a skin that hid the chat in all but a few pilot courses, assuming that was possible. I don't think that would solve potential performance issues, because that is still in the background, but it would allow them to run usability tests without exposing chat to the whole class.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Keli Amann
>>>>> User Experience Specialist
>>>>> Academic Computing Services, Stanford University
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Charles Severance" < csev at umich.edu >
>>>>> To: sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org , "sakai-dev" < sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org >
>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 8:19:44 AM
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] NeoChat for production use?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> The reason we put the chat into 2.9 with a warning was so that we would avoid everyone on the super-large schools would turn it on at the same time. My hope was that schools would start turning it on and monitor things closely.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> In terms of the "more requests" - these additional requests do not increase database load and pretty much only tax the App Servers - In many Sakai installations the DB is the rate limiting factor in terms of performance and many schools have CPU to spare on their App servers.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> So I would encourage folks at the < 15,000 student installations to start using it. If no one ever starts using it - we will never figure it out.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Think of turning this on at you school as helping the rest of us. :) If you encounter a problem I am sure that it will get quickly looked at and fixed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Its kind of like features like Dashboard or (earlier) SiteStats - we were a little nervous initially and then folks started turning them on and we improved things as we gained experience.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> To sweeten the pot, I will buy a very nice dinner steak dinner in San Diego for the first few schools who run this in production and report back by June.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> /Chuck
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Feb 19, 2013, at 5:31 AM, Adrian Fish wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Load testing hasn't demonstrated any performance problems, although the process uncovered a few bugs, which have been fixed. I'd say that confluence page probably needs qualifying.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Floating chat is a really nice feature, if I say so myself, and it seems a shame to denigrate it without some proper data.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Adrian.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 19 February 2013 10:50, Pablo San Roman Bengoetxea < pablo.sanroman at unavarra.es > wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>> 
>>>>> We are interested in NeoChat but we have seen in the document of new
>>>>> funcionalities (
>>>>> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Sakai+CLE+2.9+Release+Notes+-+What%27s+New
>>>>> ) that it is not recommended for production, only for small scale
>>>>> exploration. We are not sure if this state continues so we would like to
>>>>> know if somebody is currently using NeoChat in production.
>>>>> 
>>>>> thanks,
>>>>> Regards.
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> 
>>>> ...........................................................
>>>> Pablo San Roman
>>>> HBGMI / CSIE | tel 8482
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> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> ...........................................................    
> Pablo San Roman    
> HBGMI / CSIE | tel 8482    
> 
> 
> 
> 
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