Web Services

feature	status	release version
get transactions, get student-step rollup	done	DataShop v4.0 December 2009
add and modify custom fields	pslc review of design proposal

We are seeking your feedback on our current design proposal.

We've been discussing and designing a new feature for DataShop—the ability to add and modify custom fields for existing data in DataShop. We'd like your feedback! If you have a moment, take a look at the PDF below, pages 1-9 (the rest is an archive of our discussion that you're also welcome to read). Then send us feedback or add it to this page below.

In the document we talk a lot about web services (a way to programmatically retrieve and annotate data), but the idea of custom fields would be universal. Would this proposal meet your needs for annotating (adding columns to) your data? If not, how can it be improved?

Please add your comments by Wed January 19 2011 (after which we'll be writing low-level requirements)

User Stories

As a researcher (EDM, M&M, CMDM), I want to retrieve transaction data programmatically and append custom fields to transactions in DataShop so that I can more easily run my models on the data outside of DataShop and put the results back in.
As a researcher with a machine learning background, I want to retrieve student-step data programmatically so that I can more easily run my analyses on the data without much human intervention.

As a researcher who has created a custom field for an existing data set, I want to import that new field into the step rollup table so that it is both preserved and available in DataShop tools. - Ryan Baker, 12/15/2008

Notes/Comments

Comments on the Proposal for Web Services: Custom Fields

Notes on the feature

• Adding custom fields to existing datasets at Transaction Level only
• Needed for M&M and CMDM clusters [Ryan Baker, October 2008]
• Will enable researchers to use output from existing models
  • Gaming Detector [Arnon Hershkovitz, Mihaela Cocea, Summer 2008]
  • Bayesian Knowledge Tracing. [Hao Cen, migrated from feature wish list]
• Key to collaboration.
• Ability to automatically add columns to DataShop data sets at transaction level [Ryan, Startup Memo, summer 2008]
• Points:
  • Tx level, Need user incentive to upload values, need associated notes, need graphing of

Semi-structured interviews with researchers

• Ido Roll: main conclusions are that being able to use the new columns in the same ways one can use DataShop-native colums might be crucial; data is often not at transaction level (eg, student variable), so DS might do the tx-level mapping for the user based on key column(s)
  
• Phil Pavlik, email: "I guess I might use the adding of a column by itself if the opportunity was there to look at it as a model graph in DataShop. Often it is good to visualize the results of a model."

• Get Step Rollup
  • How to show the KCs, multiple columns? one column? use labels or 1's and 0's? -- Ken Koedinger, DataShop Team Meeting, Aug 28, 2009
    • Multimapped - column for every KC, then 1 or 0 (this is the Q matrix structure)
    • The other way to go, is to have one column for all the KCs

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See completed DataShop 3.x Features
See on-going DataShop 4.x Features
See unordered Collected User Requests