Lab Report assignment

We have drafted a "Lab report" assignment for the beta version of the Assignment Calculator. We will be sharing this with faculty to get feedback and continue to edit. Take a look: https://tools.lib.umn.edu/ac/?assnId=180. Please let me know (katep@umn.edu) if you have any feedback. We hope to make this part of the Calculator in early August.

p.s. the image is part of the IMAGE collection.

Assignment Calculator in Brief

The new Assignment Calculator was highlighted in the University of Minnesota Weekly Brief on February 11

OS version of Assignment Calculator vulnerable to XSS attack

Thanks to the fine folks at the University of Portland, we have been alerted to the possibility of the Assignment Calculator code (specifically "date.php") being susceptible to a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack.

What this means is that using a GET method with the date.php someone could create a link to date.php that could possibly execute harmful code or forward a person to a web site seeking passwords or other personal information. For example:

A link like this:
http://www.lib.umn.edu/help/calculator/date.php?monthone=2&dayone=3&yearone=2009&monthtwo=2&daytwo=4&yeartwo=<script>alert('Hi%20Everyone!');</script>

could be sent to a person spoofing the library email address and an XSS attack may occur.

Again, the good people at the University of Portland have not only pointed out this problem, but they've also provided some simple scripting that will help people fix this problem in current installations.

The code in the ZIP file below checks for the existence of all the GET variables. Then, it checks that each entry is actually a number.

If it is a number, the code trims the number down to be 2 characters (day and month) or 4 characters (year). This prevents people putting in the year 20098 or something similar.

Again, thanks to Ronan at the University of Portland for finding this and providing a fix!

Download file

Check out the BETA version

New Beta version is Up!!

After many hours of hard work by librarians, programmers and a variety of others we are please to announce a new Beta version of the Calculator is here.

New features include:
• New assignments (Video/Media, Speech/Presentation).
• Instructor control possible over steps to reflect actual due dates.
• Add/Remove/Rearrange individual assignment steps.
• Ability to add personalized notes and links to assignment steps.

Link to new Assignment Calculator: https://tools.lib.umn.edu/ac/

Due to all of the great new features of the Calculator is does require a University of Minnesota Internet ID to log in. We will be posting more information on the Beta version soon.

List of Assignment Calculators across the country!

Hello everyone! There has been a lot of activity with the Assignment Calculator since the beginning of the semester and a lot of new installations. And while this list is hardly complete, Judy Siebert Maseles at the University of Missouri-Columbia has compiled a list of all the Assignment Calculators she could find around the country:

Reseach Paper Assistance Calculators

Like I said, this list is not comprehensive. If you would like to be added, please send an email to Judy at "maselesj at missouri.edu." Thanks Judy!

New and improved downloads for the Assignment Calculator!

Matthew Decker of Wayne State University has taken the time to rewrite some of the code for the Assignment Calculator in order to make it easier to install for everyone. We have now replaced the old versions of the AC downloads with Matt's new versions.

The biggest change in Matt's new versions is that he changed the appropriate variables througout the code to specifically pull from GET or POST allowing global variables to be off. This was a common problem caused by the fact that the original AC was written with global variables turned on. Many institutions install PHP without global variables turned on for security reasons. The U of M Libraries was not one of those institutions!

So, a special thanks to Matt Decker for reworking and improving the code for all! Thanks a million Matt!

Improvements to the AC

Thanks to RIT for making some improvements to the code. We've added it to the Open Source distributed on this site.

Here's a message from Jon Jiras explaining more:

"Our web master Patrick Haney (pwhwml@rit.edu) rewrote the utils.js file
the Univeristy of Minnesota uses for date validation on the assignment
calculator. I think he improved it considerably. Feel free to use it
and/or incorporate it into the general distrubution of the assignement
calculator.

Instead of complaining to the user that they entered a month or date
with a leading zero, Patrick's script simply removes the leading zero
and continues normally. It allows users to enter leading zeros (or not)
-- whichever they prefer -- without poping up an error message. In
addition, it still does not allow the user to enter invalid months,
dates greater then the number of days in the specified month, or alpha
characters. And it gives much more descriptive error messages whenever
one of these events happens.

Thanks for a great program! It's getting rave reviews here. We'll
probably add the email features soon.

Jon Jiras
Library Software Specialist
Wallace Library
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY 14623
585-475-7737
jjjwml@rit.edu

New version of the Assignment Calculator: Now with email reminder functionality!

Many of you have asked for the code that the U of M uses to send email reminders to people that want to be reminded when different steps of the research process are due for their assignments. Well, here it is! I sincerely hope that these instructions will make sense, but there is a possibility that you will have some questions regarding setting up this new AC version. If you have any questions, please use the comments function of this blog entry so that everyone may benefit from your question, and hopefully the answer!

These instructions are based on the use of a MySQL database. If you are using another type of database please consider sharing any modifications necessary to get the AC to work.

Now all you need to do is download the new zip file for the new version of the AC. This new version obviously has some changes to the existing files and also adds some files:

1. The file instructions.php has two new functions: connect_db() -- to connect to the database you have set up and mailme() -- the function that actually sends out the emails.
2. The file date.php has a new for() loop that generates the button that says "Submit for email reminders!" and also at the bottom of the file are the functions that send out the emails. In other words, date.php is the trigger that sends the emails out. Obvioulsy this could also be done with a chron job, but at the University of Minnesota the AC gets used so much emails are sent regularly on a daily basis. However, if your AC doesn't get used everyday, you should probably go the chron job route.
3. There is a new file called mailme.phtml. This is a simple form for the user to fill out his/her email address and the name of his/her assignment.
4. Another new file is called mail.phtml. This file inserts the emails into the database and is the action of the mailme.phtml script above.
5. Finally, we have delmail.phtml. This file deletes the mail from the database if a user doesn't want to receive it anymore. This option appears in emails that the user has already received.

In order to install this new version of the Assignment Calculator follow these (hopefully) simple instructions. You will need:

1. Access to a PHP enabled web server. If you aren't sure if you have access or if you aren't sure you have a PHP enabled web server, talk with your server administrator.
2. The ability to create a new web directory on your server. There are 9 files that come in the this version of the Assignment Calculator with Email Reminders. For the initial installation, all of these files must reside in the same directory on your server.
3. There is no need to know PHP, but you will want to change or configure the file called "instructions.php." This file holds the information for the time limits for each step as well as the text and links for each step of your institution's preferred research process.
4. Create the database that will hold the email dates waiting to be sent. Create a database named "calculator." Inside of that database create a table called "calc_mail." Here is what it should look like:

   +---------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-----------+
   | Field  | Type           | Null | Key | Default | Extra       |
   +---------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-----------+
   |mail_id |int(5) unsigned |     |PRI |NULL    |auto_increment |
   |datum   |varchar(8)      |YES  |    |NULL    |               |
   |step    |char(2)         |     |    |        |               |
   |email   |varchar(100)    |     |    |        |               |
   |name    |varchar(255)    |     |    |        |               |
   +---------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-----------+
   

   This is where the email reminders will reside. You will also need to give your web server access to insert data into this table.

5. Open instructions.php and find the function connect_db(). Alter this function to use the database criteria you have just set up.
6. That should be all you need to do. Go ahead and give it a try!

Again, if you have any problems please leave a comment. However, if they are problems dealing with your database you may need to solve those on your own! If you want to give it a try before you download, I have installed and configured it so that you can both calculate and send your self some emails.

Good luck!

How the A.C. was created

Creating the Assignment Calculator was a team effort with people from across campus.

As User Education Coordinator I pulled together a working group in 2001 that included the Student Writing Center and the Center for Teaching and Learning Services. We also consulted with other librarians, staff in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Writing, and then worked closely with our IT staff to design and implement the site.

After consulting a number of books on writing research papers, we pared down the research and writing process into 12 steps (yes, a bit tongue-in-cheek) and identified percentage allocations for each step. Next we identified services and resources available at the U and beyond that would help them during those steps.

Our IT staff pulled together the interface and the programming.

The tool has done fairly well in usability testing with the exception of the buttons for the email reminders and printer-friendly version which are not entirely visible to our test participants.

We are currently creating a much more elaborate version of the Assignment Calculator for dissertators: "The Dissertation Calculator."

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For a nice break-down of steps and time allocations for the research/writing process see Writing research papers : a guide to the process by Stephen Weidenborner, Domenick Caruso.