Contribution (types)

Contribution (types) adds an additional drop-down field to the add/edit/modify screen of wikipages, blogs, comments, tikisheets, and forums. The administrator configures this feature so that the drop down contains a list of "contribution types" (or other required information) and can make using this selector required to make a save. Thus it can function as a mandatory Edit Comment field.

Once entered, contribution types are color coded, and can be viewed in summary graphs, the action log and in the revision history.

Features 'Contribution (types)' vs. 'Contributions by Author'

Keep in mind that this feature can be used in parallel to the Contributions by Author, since they both cover fetching data from the authors contributions:

Contributions by Author works on a page per page basis, showing which piece of text was written by whom, for any page version that you are viewing.
Contribution allows each user to indicate the type of contribution performed in each wiki page, comments, sheets, blogs, .... And by means of the Action log feature, an editor can see a report on a collection of pages (which can be filtered/grouped by categories, selection of multiple users, groups of users, and time periods), showing not only the amount of text added or deleted for each user or group of users, but also the types of contributions, as tagged by users (students) and corrected (if needed) by editors (teachers)

Enabling the feature

Activate this feature from the Features Admin page (Admin -> Features -> Global Features -> Contribution) at yourURL/tiki-admin.php?page=features

Scope: this feature affects Blog, Wiki, Comments, Spreadsheet, or forums.

Related features:
Edit Comment (which it compliments in wiki), Wiki Page Staging and Approval (an approval mechanism), and MyAccount (tracking user contributions and todos). Contributions by Author

Usage

Initially designed for educational scenarios, promoting and enhancing students onto experiential-reflective learning (See below, at references section).

May also be useful for workgroups and project management.

Details

For instance, a contribution can be:

support requests
questions that allow new evolution on an electronic discussion/dialogue
new hypothesis
new information
summarizing
issues related to organization in the team of work
...

I	Contribution type	Description
	Others (report)	Other contribution type not listed in the menu at present (report which one to teachers)
*	Organizational aspects	Proposals and other questions related to the organization of the work team, scheduling,....
*	Improvements in markup	Improvements in markup, spelling, etc. (bear in mind that final document quality for printing (nicer tables, paginated table of contents, page markup...) will be performed at the end
*	Support requests	Simple questions, help requests, etc. without too much making of previous information
**	Help partners	Help group or course mates who asked questions, requested support, formulated doubts, etc. (group or course forum)
**	New information	New information has been added to text or discussion
***	New hypotheses	New hypothesis has been prepared from preexisting information, and possibly, some new information (if so, mark option ' New information ' also)
***	Elaborated questions and new routes to advance	Elaborated questions and new ways to move forward in the work which they were not taken into account previously (not just simple questions or elementary requests of support)
***	Synthesis / making of information	Synthesize or refine speech with preexisting information

Examples

Forum

Example on forum post, prior to posting:

and after posting:

The byte count in action log report does not take into account the lines starting by "> " or included by QUOTE tags (previous message).

Wiki

Example at wiki edition time, showing the description of each item in the list of type of contributions as a pop up blue window when the mouse passes over the help roud blue icon ( ).

Example on Wiki page history:

Tikisheet

Example on a spreadsheet:

Report contributions in tables

The action log feature can display them.

There is also a table reporting the evolution in time (weeks or days) of contributions:

Additions are shown in green background, deletions in pink, and the difference is shown without any special background color. Units are either bytes or kb, specified previously through the reporting filters described in Action log page, as well as start and end date, and if columns are days or weeks.

The main goal of reporting them is showing students in tutorship sessions what the log of their activity respect to the average of their class, for instance, as a simple way to enable students self-regulate their effort investment in the learning process of that activity/subject/course, etc. Many other uses can be achieved with that information, and it is not intended to be the only way to "grade" students activity but to enhance broad information to tutors about students activity to improve feedback to student along the learning activity process, and not only as grading information at the end.

Reporting contributions in graphs

When contribution feature is enabled, Action log feature will allow displaying the summaries of contribution by types along time also in graphs. The graphs are produced in better quality when jpgraph library is installed in you Tiki (see Mod jpgraph for more details). You can also download the library in lib/jpgraph.
Nota: the preference feature_jpgraph must be manually turn in in the database adn you must clear the cache after.

Copy to clipboard

insert into tiki_preferences (name, value)values('feature_jpgraph', 'y');

These are the type of graphs produced (examples produced having jpgraph lib installed on the site)

Users contribution: Addition and Suppression

Total contributions: Additions and Suppressions over time

Total contributions: Additions and Suppressions

Group contributions: Additions and Suppressions

Contributor feature

This feature can be enabled in Admin -> Contribution. It allows an user to select which other mats of his/her group where co-authoring (or just contributing, at least) to that wiki page edition.

Action log will reflect that contribution also.

Note that there is a setting to allow users to see user's contributions (within a user activity log) at Admin -> Login ("Displays user's contribution in the user information page:"). If enabled, a user will be able to see other user's activity log, including his/her contributions on the report.

References

Kolb. D. A. and Fry, R. (1975): Toward an applied theory of experiential learning. in C. Cooper (ed.) Theories of Group Process, London: John Wiley.

De Pedro, X. (2006): "Estimulación y evaluación del aprendizaje 'experiencial-reflexivo' del alumnado mediante la formulación explícita del tipo de contribuciones". Workgroup on Experiential-Reflective Learning, at the Institute of Sciences of Education, University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 100 pp. (pdf: http://seeds4c.org/dl529)

De Pedro, X. (2007): "New method using Wikis and forums to evaluate individual contributions in cooperative work while promoting experiential learning: results from preliminary experience". Communication Submitted to to WikiSym2007 (http://www.opensym.org/ws2007): 2007 International Symposium on Wikis. Wikis at Work in the World: Open, Organic, Participatory Media for the 21st Century. October 21-23, 2007, Montréal, Canada. (Pdf: http://seeds4c.org/dl539)