| Week |
Date |
Entry |
| 1 |
19/07/2004 |
Start of the project
- Made the decision for my project; does not have
a title yet
- The project will assumingly deal with XML
- Context: Course structures at Monash
University
|
| 2 |
26/07/2004 |
- First project meeting
- Discussed the overall scope of the project
- Aims seem to be rather vague: "Improvement of
quality of information through XML"
- Discussed some advantages of XML: structural
comparisons
|
| 3 |
2/08/2004 |
Introductory reading:
- Monash University Handbooks; online unit
descriptions and course descriptions
- Australian higher education system; Australian
Qualifications Framework
- Differences to the German system
|
| 4 |
9/08/2004 |
Introductory Reading:
- Units and courses at Monash University
- Exploring the unit and course descriptions;
getting to know the terminology; encountered
difficulties as there is no glossary which explains
the terms; synonyms; abbreviations
|
| 5 |
16/08/2004 |
Introductory Reading:
- Trying to gather literature on course
structures; hardly any literature because the terms
are heavily overloaded: a "course" at Monash
University often means a "unit" at other
universities
- Most literature about course structures is
about structuring the content of a unit => wrong
context
- Exploring existing Student Assistance Systems:
SASy, University of Ulm
- Elektronisk Standard for Utdanningsinformasjon
(eSU): A Norwegian approach to develop a unit
catalogue which can be used both national and
international
-
- Documentation is in Norwegian
- Still under development
- Different terminology
- First experiments with XML and course
structures
|
| 6 |
23/08/2004 |
Further introductory reading
|
| 7 |
30/08/2004 |
Further introductory reading |
| 8 |
6/09/2004 |
- Discussed the research proposal
- Discussed the motivation for the project
|
| 9 |
13/09/2004 |
- Research proposal writing
|
| 10 |
20/09/2004 |
- Develpment of the idea of course definitions
vs. course instances; later discarded
- Still struggeling with terminology at Monash
University
-
- units, courses, course programs, subjects,
sequences, majors, minors, streams, ...
???
|
| 11 |
27/09/2004 |
- Further exploration of XML
-
- Different standards for XSLT and
XPath
|
| 12 |
4/10/2004 |
- Development of course structure as a tree
model; turned out to be rather inflexible and only
parts of the idea incorporated into the course map
XML construct later
|
| 13 |
11/10/2004 |
- Clarifications on major / minor streams or
sequences required
- Difficulties to understand the terminology at
Monash University; the terms are nowhere clearly
defined, and many people use them differently
|
| 14 |
18/10/2004 |
- Discussed the idea of generating dependency
graphs from course definitions; later
discarded
|
| 15 |
25/10/2004 |
- Discussed the Literature Review, first draft
version
|
| 16 |
1/11/2004 |
- Evaluation of tree structures
-
- Chronologically, a course seems to have a
tree-like structure: years, semesters, ...
- Such a tree-like structure could be useful
to generate a graph which shows the
dependencies between units
- Update: Only parts of the idea
|
| 17 |
8/11/2004 |
- Backgound reading on (attribute) grammars,
which might be useful in order to validate the unit
choices of students; John suggested a parser
approach; however, later discarded
|
| 18 |
15/11/2004 |
- Background reading on modelling techniques
-
|
| 19 |
22/11/2004 |
Literature Review |
| 20 |
29/11/2004 |
Literature Review |
| 21 |
6/12/2004 |
Literature Review |
| 22 |
13/12/2004 |
Literature Review |
| 23 |
20/12/2004 |
Break
|
| 24 |
27/12/2004 |
Break |
| 25 |
3/01/2005 |
Break |
| 26 |
10/01/2005 |
- Start of development of the analysis
program
- Approach: Transform each unit description to an
XML document and enhance the quality of the
information
|
| 27 |
17/01/2005 |
- Development of the analysis program
-
- Encountered problems with capturing the
content of the prerequisites, corequisites and
prohibitions entries:
-
- Boolean expressions use different
notations and are often written
incorrectly
- Natural language
|
| 28 |
24/01/2005 |
- Experimenting with XML and learning the
different standards
- Development of XML Schemas and XSL
transformations
- XPath 1.0 vs. XPath 2.0
- XInclude
- Programming with XML in Java:
-
- Java API for XML Processing: JAXP (DOM,
SAX),
- Java API for XML Binding:
- Evaluation of different XML tools:
-
- Altova XML Spy,
- Oxygen XML,
- Eclipse
- Evaluation of the developed XML documents
|
| 29 |
31/01/2005 |
- Further development of the analysis
program
-
- Enhancement of the data before matching on
regular expressions
|
| 30 |
7/02/2005 |
- Discoved of a "hidden" source of course
information: the Monash University Calendar which
contains the Faculty Regulations;
-
- Terminology used at Monash University gets
clearer
- Faculty Regulations contain clear
definitions of sequences; Problem: each faculty
can define the terms differently (e.g., minor
sequence), but they are often used university
wide
- Trying to develop XML Schemas for course
structures, now incorporating Faculty Regulations;
results later discarded; Reason: Not all faculties
provide Faculty Regulations
|
| 31 |
14/02/2005 |
- Researched the fundamental concepts of
choices
-
- Choice with replacement / w/o replacement
of the drawn elements during drawing
process
- Duplicates
|
| 32 |
21/02/2005 |
- Developed the generic choice construct
-
- First XML Schemas
- Experiments with different types of models
for a choice
|
| 33 |
28/02/2005 |
- Transformations to HTML
-
- Encountered difficulties because of the
recursive definition of the choice
construct
|
| 34 |
7/03/2005 |
- Two different computations based on
choices:
-
- Perform the actual drawing process, i.e.,
generate solutions for a choice
- Test is a set of elements is a solution for
a choice
- In order to make computations based on choices,
a backtracking algorithm is required
-
- Review of Prolog
-
- Implicit backtracking algorithm
(solution strategy)
- Transformations of choices to Prolog terms
-
- This transformation is rather
straightforward; Prolog lends itself to
recursive structures (nesting of terms and
lists)
- Development of Prolog program to generate
solutions
-
- Encountered difficulties to generate the
correct results for different types of (nested)
choices
- Development of test cases for choices
- "Discovery": Both computations (see first
point) can be done with a single Prolog
program
|
| 35 |
14/03/2005 |
- Finished the analysis program
- Start with the classification of conditions
entries which cannot be analyzed by the
program
-
- Development of XSL transforation for the
classification
- Introduction of different classes that the
entries can belong to
- Several refinements of the classification
process
- Discovered the declarative / enumerative
tradeoff that authors of unit descriptions have
when referring to units in the prerequisites,
corequisites and prohibitions entries
-
- Idea: Prolog can solve this!
- Discovery of tradeoff between inclusive or and
exclusive or in boolean expressions and natural
language (when both notations are mixed)
|
| 36 |
21/03/2005 |
- Start of development of the extended choice
construct
-
- XML Schema,
- XSL transformations to HTML and Prolog
terms
|
| 37 |
28/03/2005 |
- Finished the classification
-
- General idea what authors want to express
in the prerequisites, corequisites and
prohibitions entries
- Improvement of the extended choice
construct
-
- Added base type element for courses
- Added base type element for sequence
|
| 38 |
4/04/2005 |
- Applying the extended choice construct to other
contexts
-
- Sequences
- Course maps
- General rules
|
| 39 |
11/04/2005 |
- Development of Prolog programs
-
- Finding out dependencies between units
|
| 40 |
18/04/2005 |
- Setting up test framework to test Prolog
programs
- Development of Prolog programs
-
- Prolog program for unit enrolment test
- Development of XSL transformations for
sequences
|
| 41 |
25/04/2005 |
- General improvements of XSL
transformations
- Development of Prolog programs for
sequences
- Thesis writing
|
| 42 |
2/05/2005 |
- General improvements of XSL
transformations
- Thesis writing
|
| 43 |
9/05/2005 |
- Thesis writing (Performed analysis, Formal
specifications)
- Further development of the Prolog programs
- Testing
|
| 44 |
16/05/2005 |
- Thesis writing (Introduction, Background,
Motivation)
- Preparations for final presentation
|
| 45 |
23/05/2005 |
- Thesis writing (Discussion)
- Final Presentation
- Start development of website
|
| 46 |
30/05/2005 |
|
| 47 |
6/06/2005 |
|
| 48 |
13/06/2005 |
- End development of the website
|
| 49 |
20/06/2005 |
End of project
|