OnTask Tutorial

Before you start the tutorial make sure you have an account in an OnTask instance and you have instructor privileges (create workflows, actions, etc). Also, download the file learner_information.csv that contains a synthetic data set with information about learners, participation in a discussion forum, engagement with activities, and some additional features.

Remember the three central concepts in OnTask:

Workflow
A container with the data (table), a set of procedures to manipulate columns, data upload and a set of actions. This container is typically associated with a course, but it could also model an entire institutional degree.
Table
A two-dimensional structure in which each row represents a learner, and each column a learner attribute such as the score in an assessment, class attendance, number of interventions in the discussion forum, engagement with videos, etc.
Actions
An action is a HTML resource of which certain parts that are included or excluded based on a set of conditions created with the learner attributes (for example, number of interventions in the forum is larger than five, and number of times a video was watched is larger than 2).

The following figure represents the high level view of the tool.

../_images/drawing.png

The process to create a personalised text is divided into four stages:

Upload the data
We will use a CSV file with the learners data about several activities in a course. In this first stage you will upload the data into a table and identify certain special columns (those that provide a unique reference to a learner such as the learner ID)
Review the data table
In this stage you will explore the values in the table.
Create an action
In this stage you will create an action with various conditions that will be applied to the text of a personalised email message.
Review the messages
And finally you will review the appearance of these messages for different learners.

The following steps describe the required operations in each of these stages.

Create a new workflow

Log into the tool and click in the tool icon on the top left corner of the screen. If you have an instructor account, you will see the button to create a new workflow as shown in the following figure.

../_images/01_home_create_workflow.png

The icon in the top right corner next to your profile image is a link to the OnTask documentation. Click in the button to create a new workflow and enter its name and a description.

../_images/02_new_workflow_name.png

Once you created the workflow the platform shows the list of all the workflows available.

../_images/02_b_workflow_table.png

The first step is to select or open a workflow by clicking on the name to manipulate it. Once this operation is done, the access to the element is blocked for any other users (in case the workflow is being shared) to prevent two users changing the data or the actions simultaneously. The following screens will show the name of the selected workflow at the top. If you want to select another workflow to manipulate, you simply click in the OnTask icon at the top left corner of the screen to go back to the initial table.

Open a workflow

When you open a workflow, a page with its details is shown like the one in the following figure

../_images/03_data_initial.png

You can see the icon on the top right corner that links to the initial page, and the icon in the top left corner that links to the documentation. So far the page only shows the description of the workflow and the last time it was modified because no data has been uploaded.

The top of the screen now shows the sections offering different operations over the workflow:

Details
Is the current page with information about the columns, data types, number of actions, etc.
Table
Operations to visualise and manipulate the table (search for values, add a row, add a column)
Actions
Operations to create the actions and conditions.
Logs
A table showing the history of operations performed on this workflow

The buttons immediately under title Workflow Details show some of the operations available at this point:

Data Upload

We now upload the data included in the file learner_information.csv. Click in the Dataops menu, and then in the option to CSV Update/Merge as shown in the following figure

../_images/05_data_csvupload_initial.png

The next screen asks you to choose a file to upload the data.

../_images/05_b_data_csvupload_initial.png

Choose the file learner_information.csv and proceed to the next step. The next screen shows a table with the name of the detected columns, the type (also automatically detected), a pre-filled field with the column name (in case you want to change it), and if it is a key column (there are no repeated values in all the rows).

../_images/06_data_csvupload_student_list.png

The key columns are highlighted because a workflow must have at least one column of this type in its table. Select all the column (clicking in the top element labeled load) and click on the Finish button, and then back to the Details page to see the summary of the information in the workflow.

You can now see the information about the columns present in the workflow as shown in the follogin figure

../_images/07_data_view_student_external.png

For each column you can change its name, description, type and key attributes, or delete it from the workflow (icons in the left most column of the table).

Browsing the table

Once the data has been uploaded, click in the Table link at the top of the screen. The following screen shows the values stored in the table

../_images/18_table_initial.png

Workflow Operations

There are several operations available at the details page.

Attributes

If you click again in the Details link at the top of the screen you will see again the page with the workflow details, but this time it will include the information about the columns just loaded.

You can define a set of attributes in the workflow. This is simply a set of pairs name, value that you can use to have a single place where a value is defined and then reused in several other locations. For example, the name of the course is probably going to appear in various communications with the learners. If you define the attribute Course_name with that value, you can then refer to the attribute and it will be replaced by its value.

../_images/20_table_custom_attributes_initial.png

Share

You may share a workflow with other instructors in the platform. The Share button will allow you to add/remove other users to this list.

../_images/21_workflow_share.png

Remember that whenever you open a workflow, it becomes unavailable for the other users with whom it is being shared.

Export

This functionality allows you to take all the information included in a workflow and export it. The functionality offers the option of including in the export only the data, or the data and the actions.

../_images/22_workflow_export.png

Clone

This button creates a clone of the workflow with the a name containing the prefix “Copy of”. Once the operation is executed, the workflow is available in the home screen (link in the upper left corner of the screen).

Rename

Use this function to change the name and description of the workflow

Flush Data

This function deletes the data associated with the workflow. It maintains the set of attributes and the actions, but it removes the conditions and filters from all the actions.

Delete

This function deletes completely the workflow from the platform.

Actions

Click in the Actions link at the top of the screen. The next screen shows the list of actions that are part of the workflow, and if there is none, you will only see the buttons to crate a new ones.

../_images/22_rule_initial.png

Actions Out

Click on the button to create a new Action Out and provide a name and a description.

../_images/23_action_create.png

The next screen is the action editor. The functions are divided into three areas. The one at the top allows you to specify a condition to select or filter a subset of students. The second contains the conditions to be used in the personalised text. The third is a HTML text editor with the content to personalise.

../_images/24_action_edit.png

Place the cursor in the text area and start the text with a salutation, then select the name of a column from the pull-down menu right above the text editor and select the column GivenName. The string {{ GivenName}} appears in the text area. This notation is to instruct the next steps to replace the value among double curly braces with the name of each student.

Click now in the button New in the condition area. A form appears to introduce the name, description and formula. The formula may contain any combination of Boolean operators with respect to the column values. For example, the condition:

Q01 is equal to 0 AND Q02 is equal to 0

can be encoded in the formula widget as shown in the following figure

../_images/25_action_condition_edit.png

We can now use this condition to control the appearance of text in the text area. Write a sentence that you would like to appear, select it and then click in the arrow button in the condition.

../_images/26_action_condition_insert.png

The text area is then surrounded by two marks:

{% if Todo_review_T1 %}You need to review Topic 1{% endif %}

This is the encoding to instruct the processing step to check the value of the condition Topic_1_incorrect and include the surrounded text only if the condition is true.

You may also insert any attributes attached to the workflow. The attribute name will be replaced by its value when processing the text.

Actions In

To be written.