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Faculty Assembly

11-10-00

Introduction & Scope

The following is a summary of reports professor Morley received regarding the test FCQ process. The reports are typically from students to professor Morley. There are several reports that appear to be from other faculty members.

C3 has reviewed these reports and summarized their content below. Full copies of the correspondence received by professor Morley are available directly from him.

The reports received seem to be mixed. This is to be expected. We expect students that successfully completed the online FCQ without difficulty typically did not provide any feedback. We were encouraged to read reports stating there was no difficulty experienced with the online FCQ, and approving its use. At the same time we do understand that not all students that experienced difficulty with the process submitted reports.

The problems experienced and reported are primarily technical in nature. Some are more behavioral in nature. A summary of problems is provided first. For each type of problem reported the following is provided;

• A description of the problem reported.

• The number of occurrences reported or known.

• Cause of the problem if identified.

• Corrective action taken or recommended.

There is a summarized statement of each report in the last section of this document.

Classen Computer Consulting, Inc. (C3) is willing to modify the Surveyor Online application as noted within this document at its own expense. Other changes requested by UCCS will require our review, and may be considered customization and therefore subject to charge. We will gladly work closely with UCCS staff to identify needed changes and to determine if they should be included in the Surveyor Online product.

 Summary of reports

There were six basic problems reported. There is a category for each listed below. These are not listed in any particular order.

 Security

The most significant problem reported was regarding security of information. There were two reports of this problem.

Students could bypass the Surveyor Online web site login screen and somehow access the administrative functions of the website. This was reported by a faculty member of the University Management System at CU in Boulder. A student made another similar report. In that case, this problem occurred after the student had accessed the Surveyor Online site from off campus using a bookmark as listed below.

C3 has corrected this problem. Students may not bypass the login screen and continue directly to the survey area. We have also improved the security mechanism used to authenticate users attempting to access the administrative functions. We recommend that the administrative section of the Surveyor Online site be changed so that lists of SSN and PIN information is not easily, if ever, seen on a web page. C3 will likely make this change.

 Off campus access

There were complaints that students could not access the FCQ survey from off campus. There were four instances of this problem n the reports professor Morley provided. We are aware of several others. C3 received approximately 30 requests for login names and passwords, indicating that it occurred at least this often.

This problem was caused by several late changes to the system to accommodate UCCS security concerns. The Surveyor Online application was originally designed to perform student authentication itself We expected the application’s database to have its own list of students and their PIN’s that are used for authentication.

Because the test run of the application was run on a web host server off campus UCCS understandably determined that student PIN information should not be provided to us. Instead, the students were asked to login to the "online student center" which would perform it’s typical authentication.

A hyperlink to the Surveyor Online site was placed on the online student center. This hyperlink contained coded information regarding the authenticated student, and the Surveyor Online web site presented the proper student specific information without re-authenticating the student. If a student book marked this particular page in their web browser software and then returned to it later, the authentication information was not passed to the Surveyor Online web site.

In this instance the student was presented with a login dialog box asking for login name and password. Students could not get into the Surveyor Online web site until they determined their password. For this test, they could obtain their login name and Surveyor Online password directly from C3 via email. We received approximately 30 of these requests.

Had the student PIN information been available to the Surveyor Online web site this problem would not have occurred. In addition, if the students experiencing this problem had attempted to access the Surveyor Online site through the hyperlink located within the online student center web site they would not have had any difficulty.

No changes to the application are needed if it is deployed on a University system controlled computer. If the Surveyor Online is to be run on C3 servers then this issue will need to be addressed. We have several ideas regarding corrective action. Determination of which idea is best suited to UCCS needs must be discussed.

 Access using older versions of web browsers

There were two reports that the Surveyor Online did not work properly when accessed by older or unknown Internet browser software. In one instance the evaluation could be completed, but with difficulty, in the other instance the evaluation could not be rendered or completed.

Surveyor Online was designed to be compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and above, or Netscape Navigator 4.0 or above. Testing was conducted to assure compatibility with these two Internet browser software packages. C3 can reconfirm that Surveyor Online functions with these two browsers.

Because these two browsers (combined) account for a vast majority of the installed user base we do not anticipate making changes to accommodate other Internet browser software. We will guarantee that Surveyor Online works with both the specified Internet browser software families.

 No FCQ evaluation for specific class

There are three documented instances where a student was enrolled in a class, but when visiting Surveyor Online an evaluation for that course was not presented. We are aware of several other undocumented cases of this problem.

There was a problem with the data upload to the Surveyor Online database. Incomplete information regarding classes was provided by UCCS. This caused one or more classes not to be listed, and of course no evaluations could be collected for them. This occurred for the Comm 580 class, and perhaps others (data not available at the time this document was created).

This is a problem with the information collected and provided by UCCS. C3 is considering changes to Surveyor Online that will help assure that the survey administrators provide complete information. No specific changes have yet been identified for inclusion in the Surveyor Online product.

Timeout occurred while completing survey

There are two written reports in professor Morley’s collection that appear to be related to the timeout security function of the Surveyor Online online. There reports are not definitive. We are aware of several verbal complaints that the Surveyor Online web site "disconnected" users because they had not submitted their FCQ evaluation in a timely fashion.

This behavior of the Surveyor Online product is by design. Once a student begins filling out an evaluation a timer is started. If the evaluation is not submitted before a predetermined time the student must re-authenticate. This is a common security action on web sites that require user authentication. It is designed to prevent unauthorized use of a system if a user gets up and leaves the workstation while an authenticated session is active.

We have discussed this feature and the associated problems with professor Morley and several users. We feel the feature should stay intact, and the proper corrective action is to provide clearer instructions and warnings to the student when they begin filling out an evaluation. C3 will make those changes to the application.

Professor Morley received two written comments regarding required questions.

By design the Surveyor Online product requires each question on an evaluation to be answered. When the FCQ evaluations are administered in written form in the classrooms some students have been instructed to ignore questions that do not seem relevant. The actions of Surveyor Online do not match the instructions provided.

The requirements of Surveyor Online need to be revisited and a decision regarding required questions made. We recommend that Surveyor Online be modified so that "required" is an attribute of each question. If a question on the evaluation has been flagged as required then Surveyor Online will require an answer, otherwise it will allow the user to skip the question and insert NULL into the database. C3 needs to evaluate the level of effort needed to accomplish this prior to committing itself to making this change in the Surveyor Online product at its own expense.

Synopsis of individual reports

1. There is a major security hole. Anyone that knows a student SSN and is proficient in the HTML language can access all the administration functions. This observed hole occurred if the student bypassed the login screen and went directly to the evaluation process. She claims this is the behavior they want.

2. Could not login from off campus. Complaint about our email response to use ssn and password emailed to user.

3. An error occurred after login while trying to access the survey. Error message recounted in email doesn’t provide sufficient detail to diagnose. Appears to be a systemic problem but not confirmed. Perhaps timeout related.

4. Could not access from 1E4, IE5 or Navigator 4.7 from off campus.

5. UCCS "On Line Student Center" site was down. No access because of that.

6. Student not listed for Comm 580 class.

7. Repeated difficulty accessing survey system. Appears that student was able to access system without presenting a username or password but that a query to find classes then failed (expected). At some point student had access to administrative functions as reported in item #1. Student was able to see a list of SSN although no student names were attached.

8. It all worked perfectly. The survey enforced responses to required questions. This was not consistent with instructions in other classes using the traditional FCQ.

9. Points out that using the survey allows the students to give proper time to the process. In class surveys are often rushed and perhaps therefore invalid. Did have difficulty with timeouts.

10. Report of trouble seeing questions from within web browser. Report includes comment that on old browser (unspecified) was used. Student went to other computer but didn’t know login name or password.

11. No problems with Com m 250. Couldn’t access FCQ for Comm 103

12. Worked fine.

13. No problems.

14. Message regarding "security problems" May be related to book marked site or timeout.

15. No problem with web FCQ’s. Did a paper version for another class. "This new way of filling out FCQ’s seems fine. Easy to understand also,"

16. Very easy to use. Only drawback is the required questions that didn’t seem relevant.

END

 

                                                                                                  
                                                                                                           

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