Professor Tabitha Holmes of SUNY New Paltz requested that someone re-create NViVo, a qualitative analysis software that she uses to analyze interviews for the psychology department. Chirakkal Easwaran enlisted part of his Spring 2008 Software Engineering class to create a web-based CMS to perform the functions of NViVo. This is the program that Group 1 developed.
Each user has a user interface with a left panel, a center (main)
panel, a right panel, and a top panel. The top panel links the user to
the functionality of the program. The top panel links the center panel
to the following:
Home: The main page of the program. It has basic information about the program and how to use it.
Editor: A shortcut to the interview editor. This will use either
the default project and document in the editor or the last one that was
selected.
Files: The file manager of the program. You can select your current project here. The rest of the options are for administrators.
Administrative: The administrative tasks. Coders do not have any
administrative access, since they are only meant to code the assigned
interviews. Any user can change their password here.
Project/Docs: The project and document quick selector page.
Select the active project you want, along with the associated active
document in it.
Help: The help page. You are reading it!
Logout: Log out of the program.
The right panel shows either the keywords associated with the current
document, or a list of users associated with the current project. The
left panel shows the current projects assigned to you. You can put your
mouse over them and a list of the documents in those projects will pop
up. You can select one of these documents to code it.
Each user is meant to use this program to code interviews given by the
professor. Coding is when a user reads through a interview and
highlights certain text relating to certain keywords. The keywords are
given by the administrator. Examples: sadness, anger, happiness. Each
user will not be able to see what other users have coded. Each user's
progress can saved and accessed and updated at a later time.
With a student user account, the only account options you can change
are your password and your user info. New User, Manage Users, and
Manage Projects are only available to administrators. The purpose of a
user account is solely to code the documents that are given to you.
To change your password, click the "Administrative" tab and
select "Change Password" from the bar on the left. Enter your username,
desired new password (twice), and your old password and click Submit.
To change your user info, go to the "User Info" page in the
"Administrative" section. You can also click on your user name in the
user/project relations chart. On the "User Info" page you can view your
user info and change it as well. When you change your user info you
will be asked for your password in order to save the information.
This area lists the relations between all users and all projects on
the system. It does not show documents, but it shows the name of every
user, and a list of the projects that they are connected to, along with
a list of that user's permissions (or roles). The listing for each user
begins with the user's name in bold, followed by one line that says
weather that user is a 'coder', an 'uploader', or an 'admin user',
followed by a list of the projects they are associated with. Each user
is listed in this way, including the root user. Also, an asterisk
appears next to the name of the user that is currently logged in.
Hover the cursor over a user name to see a tool-tip showing the user's
full name and contact info. You can also view information about any
user by clicking on their user name. This will bring you to the 'User
Info' page. If you click on your own name, you can edit your user info
there as well.
How do I start coding!?!?
After logging in, just click the "Editor" tab to start coding the
current project, or click on the "Projects/Docs" tab and select a
certain project and document to work on.
Once in the editor screen, select a certain keyword from the list on
the right side. Now search through the document and highlight the parts
of the interview you deem relevent to this certain keyword. As you
highlight each different part of text, click the "Highlight" button at
the bottom. You should see it change color.
How do I change the current project I am coding?
Click the "Projects/Docs" tab on the top and select a new project and document to work on.
How do I open a project to work on?
Click the "Projects/Docs" tab on the top and select a new project and document to work on.
How do I change my password?
Click the "Administrative" tab and select "Change Password" from the
bar on the left. Enter your username, desired new password (twice), and
your old password and click Submit.
How do I send my work to my professor?
The nature of this web-based program enables your professor to view
your progress on the fly. You do not need to submit, print, email, or
upload anything you do in the program. It is linked directly with your
professor's account!
Administrators have substantially more user permissions than a Coder. In addition to having access to the same functions as a Coder, an Administrator has the ability to create and manage users and projects. These functions can be found by clicking the Administrative link in the top panel. While Administrators have access to much of the functions of the program, Root users have the highest level of access. Specifically, Root users have exclusive access to the creation and deletion of any user (Uploader, Coder, and Administrator), can change any user's permissions, and can assign Administrators to any project.
An Administrator may create Uploaders and Coders with this function, however only Root users may create or change others to Administrators. To create a user, enter the Username, Password (twice), and your password. Also select the permissions - Uploader (upload interviews to a project), Coder (tag keywords in a document) or Admin User (user and project maintenance). If no role is selected, the user will default to the role of a Coder. The pulldown menu allows you to assign the created user to a specific project. If no project is specified, the user will be placed in the 'default' project, and can be changed using the Manage Users function. Administrators may only assign users to projects they create.
Change user permissions and reassign project associations.
Administrators can reassign Uploader and Coder permissions for yourself
and others, whereas Root users can reassign these as well as Admin
permissions to anyone. Select the appropriate user from the dropdown
menu and assign their new roles. Enter your password and click
'Submit'.
To manage project relations, select a user from the dropdown menu. Then
select the project to work with, and choose 'Add' or 'Delete' to create
or remove the link between the specified user and project. Enter your
password and click 'Submit'. Administrators may only assign and remove
users from projects they create. In addition, users may be associated
with multiple projects.
Here you can edit information about yourself for other users to see. You can also see the information that other users have saved by clicking on their user name from the 'User/Project Relations' chart at the right of this page. If you are the root user you can edit anyone's saved user data here, as well as your own.
Enter your username, desired new password (twice), and your old password and click 'Submit'. IMPORTANT: Passwords can not be retrieved. Users who forget their passwords must have the root user modify their account.
This page allows Administrators and Root Users to create projects.
An Administrator can only delete a project they create but a Root user
can delete any project. A project folder must be empty in order for the
project to be deleted.
To create a project, enter the project name and your password and
click 'Submit'. To remove, highlight the project, enter your password
and click 'Submit'.
This page allows Administrators and Root Users to copy entire
projects. The project being copied can either be empty or have
documents, and the list of users that have access to the project can be
also copied. After the copy process is complete, users and documents
can be added and removed from the project as well.
To copy a project, select the project's name from the list, choose
weather the project will include copies of the original documents, and
choose weather the project will have all the same users as the
original. Select an option for 'group coding' or 'individual coding' project, and enter the new project's desired name. Enter your user's password, and click 'Copy'.
This page allows Administrators and Root Users to manage how codewords
are used in their projects. There are two types of coding, individual
coding and group coding. In individual coding each coder creates their
own list of codewords. Then they code the documents in the project
based on those codewords. In group coding the administrator creates a
list of codewords and everyone in the project uses those same
codewords. In effect everyone has a copy of the same codeword list. No
one but the administrator can delete codewords. This also applies to
renaming them or creating new codewords.
On this page the administrator can set the type of coding for each
project they are associated with. To set the coding to group or
individual, click the radio button next to the project's name and then
click the 'SET ALL' button. When changing a project from group to
individual, all codes are unlocked for editing. They can be renamed and
edited by users at will. When changing a project from individual to
group, all codewords currently in use by any user in the project are
copied to all other user's work areas. Then the codes are locked to all
users accept the admin user. This means users can no longer edit the
names of their codes. It also means that everyone has a copy of
everyone else's codewords -- not the highlighted areas, just the names.
Since all the codewords are copied to everyone else's work area, a
tool has been included on this page to help the admin user decide
weather or not a change from 'individual' to 'group' should be made. A
selection box on the page shows the projects that an administrator has
access to. Pick a project from the selection box and a list appears
with all the codes currently being used in that project. These are the
codes that will be copied to every user's workarea if the 'group'
option is chosen. Viewing this list does not affect the actual state of coding on any project.
This page allows Administrators and Root Users to copy the highlighting
found in projects and documents. First select the project, document,
user and codeword for the source of the material that you wish to copy,
then select the destination project, document, user and codeword. Then
check weather or not you want to copy the sticky notes from the source
location along with the highlighting. Enter your root password and
click 'COPY' or the red arrow. Your highlighting will be copied.
For the highlighting to be copied there must be a codeword set up in
the destination project as the new home for the copied information. You
can set up an empty codeword before hand especially for this purpose.
Any highlighting or sticky notes in the destination codeword will be
erased in the copy process. The source highlighting and sticky notes
will be unaffected.
The project's administrator can change the name of any codeword in a 'group coding' project. The administrator can also change a project from an 'individual coding' project to a 'group coding' project. The implications of this are that the codewords from all the users in the project are merged together and applied to everyone's work area.
StatisticsStatistics for 'group coding' projects are available to the
administrative user. These statistics show the relations between
different users coding within a project and all its documents. The
statistics page can be reached by clicking the 'Statistics' link
located in the center panel of the screen, below the document being
coded on the editor page.
The statistics page shows number of words in a document, and
number of words in an entire project, as well as info on all codings,
all codewords, the percentage of conformity between a coders work and
the project administrator as well as other data. It shows frequencies
of words repeated in the entire document and project and also
frequencies of words repeated for the selected codeword. The statistics
page can be printed out by your browser.
The overlap page is available to the administrator in all 'group
coding' projects. There are two color schemes for the overlaps page.
One is color overlaps by coder name, and the other is color overlaps by
number of codings, or overlap depth. To exit the overlaps page the user
clicks the 'editor' option on the main menu, or any other menu option.
The 'by name' view of the overlap page takes the currently
selected document and the currently selected codeword and shows in
color how many coders have coded the same text. Each coder is given
their own color and text they have coded is highlighted in that color.
When two coders have highlighted the same thing the overlaps in the
text show a separate color representing that overlap. All users in the
project can be selected, or individual users and user combinations can
be specified.
The 'overlap depth' view of the overlap page takes the currently
selected document and the currently selected codeword and shows how
many coders have coded the same text by darkening the highlighted text
each time the individual coders agree on the same text. This is to say
that if one coder highlights a piece of text the color will be yellow.
If two coders highlight the same text the color will be a darker
yellow. If three coders highlight the same text the color will be an
even darker yellow. All users in the project can be selected, or
individual users and user combinations can be specified.
As an administrator you can view the coding entered by coders in
your projects. In the right panel of the editor page is a dropdown box
that lists all the users that are available for viewing. Select a user
and click the 'View' button. The editor page will change so that no
highlighting is possible, and the codeword list will change to the one
that the respective user sees. You can now select codewords and view
the coding that the user has finished up to that point.
While viewing a coders' page you can also read their 'Document
Notes'. Simply click on the 'Show Document Notes' button to view this
material. You cannot edit the user's saved Document Notes or their
saved coding. When you are finished viewing the user's saved work you
can return to your own work by clicking on the 'Return' button, found
in the right panel of the editor page next to the 'View' button.