Setting up SimStudent to log to DataShop

SimStudent has a logging system built on top of the logging provided by CTAT. It is designed to keep track of student actions and learning. Logging can be enabled by including the -ssLogging (to log to a server) or -ssLocalLogging (to log to a local file) arguments onto the command line. Other flags can also be used to configure logging.

-ssLogURL <URL> - sets the URL of the server to which online log messages should be sent

-Dcourse_name <name> - sets the name of the course, which DataShop uses as dataset name

-Dschool_name <name> - sets the school field of log messages

-Dclass_name <name> - set the class field of log messages

When ssLogging is enabled, online logging is enabled. Online logs are sent to the server above and are designed to work with DataShop. When ssLocalLogging is enabled, local logging is enabled. Either one or both options can be enabled at once.

DataShop is a web application and data repository specifically designed for learning science applications. It provides storage for the data and visualization tools to empower analysis. More information about DataShop can be found at https://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/help.

DataShop processes the logs and makes the logs items available for export as a tab-separated value text file. Local logfiles serve more as a backup than as a main access to the information, and are located in the /log folder under SimStudentAlgebraVX with a separate log file for each SimStudent session.. They are written in XML and potentially problematic characters are escaped. These logs can be unescaped and sent to the DataShop team to process and include on DataShop. However, as the information included in the local and online logging is exactly the same, this is usually unnecessary.

The main DataShop server URLs which are used with the -ssLogURL argument are http://pslc-qa.andrew.cmu.edu/log/server or http://learnlab.web.cmu.edu/log/server. The first URL is for DataShop's QA server. It is used for any testing, processes frequently, and it is easy to gain access to most any data there. The second URL is DataShop's production server. Information sent to this server is only processed once a day, and access to the datasets has to be set up and organized by the DataShop team. However, any data from official studies with results that will be published has to go to the production server. Log in at https://pslc-qa.andrew.cmu.edu/datashop/# or https://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/index.jsp respectively to access your data, which will be found in a dataset matching the -Dcourse_name argument provided on the command line.

For information about how to interpret the SimStudent information in DataShop, see the SimStudent Logging Schema.