System and method for taggable digital portfolio creation and report generation

• US 6,092,081 A
• Filed: 03/05/1997
• Issued: 07/18/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 03/05/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Cooper, James William, Fairweather, Peter Gustav, Alpert, Sherman Robert, Lam, Richard Bruce
• Primary Examiner(s): Feild, Joseph H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Bourque, Robert D
• Application Number:
  US08/810,796
• Time in Patent Office: 1,231 Days
• Field of Search: 434/109, 434/322, 345/347, 345/971, 345/331, 345/302, 707/513, 707/907, 707/521, 707/512, 707/104
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/94 Hypermedia Hyperlinking G06F40/134
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/14 with provision for individual teacher-student communication
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

A visual metaphor is provided on a computer and/or network environment for tagging documents with various types of (education) commentary to an author'"'"'s (student'"'"'s) work and indications of (educational) goals that have been or are to be achieved. One or more of the comments and goals are based on predetermined standards. The goals or comments are optionally weighted. Summaries of these goals can be generated to assist evaluators (teachers and administrators) in evaluating both the work of the authors (students) and the success of evaluator in managing (teaching) the authors (students).

Claims

1. A multimedia computer system for storing and accessing information about a digital portfolio of projects, comprising:

a memory for storing one or more digital portfolios generated by one or more authors, each digital portfolio having one or more projects, each project having one or more proiect elements;

a graphical user interface on a computer display for displaying in a first window a digital portfolio project and in a second window a tag list of tags with a predetermined set of tags from which an evaluator can choose; and

a tagging process that tags one or more project elements with a tag to produce tagged project elements, each of the tagged project elements being associated with the respective tag, one or more of the tags being selected by the evaluator from the tag list with a predetermined set of tags, tagged project elements being stored in said memory as a database of annotated author documents,

where the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a list of goals and the graphical user interface displays in a third window a quality weight and the tagging process prompts a user for a quality weight and the quality weight is associated with the tag, the quality weight providing an indication of an author'"'"'s achievement.

2. A system, as in claim 1, further comprising a report process that creates a report from the database of annotated author documents in response to an evaluator selecting authors and documents from the database, the report process retrieving goals for the selected authors and documents, accumulating weighting factors assigned to the retrieved goals, computing normalized sums of weighted goals, and generating a report of goals by category showing normalized sums.

3. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing information in a database of annotated author documents comprising the steps of:

responding to a selection by an evaluator of an author and a particular document by displaying the selected document in a first window of a graphical user interface;

displaying in a second window of the graphical user interface a tap, list of tags with a predetermined set of tags from which the evaluator can choose;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of a portion of the displayed document;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of one or more tags from the list of tags;

associating one or more selected tags with the selected portion of the displayed document; and

saving the document and one or more tags in the database as an annotated document,

where the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a standardized list of evaluator comments and is optionally a list of goals, and

where the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a comment selected by the evaluator from the standardized set of evaluator comments by the respective tags, and where optionally the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a goal selected by the evaluator from the set of goals by the respective tag, and

where authors and evaluators have defined limited access to view comments and goals in an annotated document.

4. The computer implemented method, as in claim 3, where authors can view comments but not goals in an annotated document.

5. The computer implemented method, as in claim 3, where evaluators are classified in different classes including an administrator class and evaluators in the administrator class can view goals but not comments in an annotated document.

6. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing information in a database of annotated author documents comprising the steps of:

responding to a selection by an evaluator of an author and a particular document by displaying the selected document in a first window of a graphical user interface;

displaying in a second window of the graphical user interface a tag list of tags with a predetermine end set of tags from which the evaluator can choose, wherein the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a list of goals and the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a goal selected by the evaluator from the set of goals by the respective tag to indicate how well the author has met a goal;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of a portion of the displayed document by an evaluator;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of one or more tags from the list of tags;

associating one or more selected tags with the selected portion of the displayed document;

saving the document and one or more tags in the database as an annotated document;

retrieving goals for the selected authors and documents;

assigning weighting factors to the retrieved goals;

accumulating weighting factors assigned to the retrieved goals;

computing normalized sums of weighted goals; and

generating a report of goals by category showing normalized sums.

7. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing information in a database of annotated author documents comprising the steps of:

responding to a selection by an evaluator of an author and a particular document by displaying the selected document in a first window of a graphical user interface;

displaying in a second window of the graphical user interface a tag list of tags with a predetermined set of tags from which the evaluator can choose, wherein the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a list of goals and the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a goal selected by the evaluator from the set of goals by the respective tag and quality weight, if selected, to indicate how well the author has met the selected goal;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of a portion of the displayed document by an evaluator;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of one or more tags from the list of tags;

associating one or more selected tags with the selected portion of the displayed document;

saving the document and one or more tags in the database as an annotated document;

displaying in a third window a quality weight and prompting the evaluator to select a quality weight to be assigned to the goal to indicate how well an author has met the goal; and

associating a selected quality weight with the tag.

8. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing information in a database of annotated author documents comprising the steps of:

responding to a selection by an evaluator of an author and a particular document by displaying the selected document in a first window of a graphical user interface;

displaying in a second window of the graphical user interface a tag list of tags with a predetermined set of tags from which the evaluator can choose, wherein the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a list of goals and the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a goal selected by the evaluator from the set of goals by the respective tag and importance weight, if selected;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of a portion of the displayed document by an evaluator;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of one or more tags from the list of tags;

associating one or more selected tags with the selected portion of the displayed document;

saving the document and one or more tags in the database as an annotated document;

displaying in a third window an importance weight and prompting the evaluator to select an importance weight to be assigned to the goal; and

associating a selected importance weight with the tag.

9. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing information in a database of annotated author documents comprising the steps of:

responding to a selection by an evaluator of an author and a particular document by displaying the selected document in a first window of a graphical user interface;

displaying in a second window of the graphical user interface a tag list of tags with a predetermined set of tags from which the evaluator can choose, wherein the tag list with a predetermined set of tags is a list of goals and the tagged portion of the document is annotated by a goal selected by the evaluator from the set of goals by the respective tag and a weight, if selected;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of a portion of the displayed document by an evaluator;

receiving a selection by the evaluator of one or more tags from the list of tags;

associating one or more selected tags with the selected portion of the displayed document;

saving the document and one or more tags in the database as an annotated document;

displaying in a third window a weight;

prompting the evaluator to select a quality weight and an importance weight to be assigned to the goal; and

associating selected quality and importance weights with the tag.

10. The computer implemented method, as in claim 9, where in response to an evaluator selecting a report process and selecting authors and documents from the database, further comprising the steps of:

retrieving goals for the selected authors and documents;

multiplying quality and importance weights assigned to each the retrieved goals;

accumulating products of quality and importance weights;

computing normalized sums of accumulated products of quality and importance weights; and

generating a report of goals by category showing normalized sums of accumulated products of quality and importance weights to indicate how well goals are being met.