OAT (Online Academic Tools) is a set of tools to assist advisors and others in academic settings.
Components
OAT has a number of distinct components. ASIS (Advisor Student Information System)
ASIS presents information about a student in a consise format optimized for academic advisors. Searching for a student is fast and flexible, including reviewing the students viewed in the past.
ASIS includes a facility for taking notes about a student; notes can be made private to the writer (although some others, like Associate Deans, have permissions to view them). Canned Queries
Canned queries are pre-written queries that are made available to authorized users to run on an as-needed basis. Query subjects range from listing outstanding incomplete grades in a given faculty to measuring attrition rates by course and instructor. Courses
OAT generates photo class lists based on current course enrolment and WatCard photos. Web Services
A web service is essentially a web site for other computers. OAT-provided web services |are backing UW's Course Evaluation system and several other systems in Science and Engineering.
We welcome other uses, as well. Bulk Mail
Bulk mail allows authorized users to send email and/or log ASIS notes to all of the students (or faculty/staff) returned by a query. New communications can be based on templates or a previous communication. Virtual Queues
Virtual queues is an on-line version of a "take-a-ticket" system. Students get a ticket using a web page that reserves a place for them in a virtual line. They can monitor their position in the line on their computer or web-enabled smarthone. When they are getting close to the front, they'll be notified that it's time to actually go to the office hours.
Access to OAT
Access to OAT is in accordance with UWaterloo's policies on Information Security, Records Management, and Access to and Release of Student Information.
Associate Deans and others in similar positions or their delegates are responsible for deciding who, within their units, should or should not have access to OAT.
Requests for access to the web services should be directed to the chair of the OAT Management Board.
People
Byron Weber Becker is the primary developer behind the Online Academic Tools (OAT).
Isaac Morland is the database guru.
Steve Weber set up production and test (virtual) machines, looked after security, developed the OAT logo, etc.
David Gawley set up the virtual machines as well as the hardware OAT runs on.
OAT is governed by the OAT Management Board. Current members are:
Stephen Vavasis (Math AD Computing; chair)
Benoit Charbonneau (Math AD Undergrad)
Dan Davison (Engineering AD Undergrad)
David Bean (Registrar's Office, Director of Systems)
Daryl Dore (IST)
Tracey Sinclair (GSPA Assoc Director, Systems)
Andrea Prier (Student Success Office)
Martin Karsten (CSCF Director)
Byron Weber Becker (OAT Developer)
Isaac Morland (OAT DBA)
Past members include Wayne Oldford, David McKinnon, Marek Stastna, Charlie Clark, Ken Salem, Dan Brown, Colin Bell, Francis Poulin, Christiane Lemieux, Peter Douglas, and Mary Lynn Benninger. All have played significant roles.
Ian Goulden (Dean) and David Taylor (Director of the School of Computer Science) supported the project in the early days and were generous in allocating time, particularly for Byron. Stephen Watt and Mark Giesbrecht have continued that support.
Colin Bell and Patrick Matlock have been key supporters in IST.
Jo Voisin has been invaluable in extracting data from Quest and helping to understand what the data means.
Co-op Students:
Jay Park and Joe Wood prototyped various parts of OAT during their work terms.
Jaden Lin made many contributions, including Bulk Mail, Virtual Queues, Query's "View in ASIS", searching student notes, recording changes to queries, additional unit tests, figuring out how to use scalariform and Scala.js, and many other tasks during Winter and Spring 2016 work terms.
Tingjun (Alex) Cai fixed many bugs and made substantial improvements to our use of Scala.JS on the browser. He was a fount of much wisdom when it comes to understanding JavaScript and its interaction with Scala.JS. He also improved our management of JS libraries. Alex did his work during his Winter 2017 workterm.
Reuben McCleary brought more order to our list of canned queries, expanded our unit tests, and created a new set of end-to-end tests in Winter 2018.
Ashish Mahto fixed bugs and made many improvements to the codebase in Winter & Spring 2019 and again in Winter 2020 when he made significant improvements to the Forms subsystem.
Project Contacts
