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User Progress and Status

Introduction

In JTLanguage, on the various Course, Plan, Group, Lesson, and Content pages, in the upper right corner or in tables of subordinate items, you will see some colored circles or pie chart icons depicting a graphical representation of your progress or status with respect to the content.

For example, on a lesson page:

By default, for the case of study lists, the pie chart sections will be based on the tool study item status and counts, for the current tool configuration (the last one set in a study tool). For the case of media items, the pie chart sections will be based on whether the media has been seen or an indication of how much has been seen (or heard). For courses, plans, groups, and lessons, the pie chart sections will be a summation of the statistics for all descendent nodes and content items.

Note that for content items at group, course, or plan levels that collect study items from the same type of content items in descendent lessons or groups, the status will reflect the sum of the counts over the hierarchy. Likewise, study lists in explicit study list hierarchies will sum the status counts of descendents.

For example, here's a snapshot of an icon for a study list in which the counts for four distinct status types are shown:

Color Coding

Here's a table for the color coding of the pie chart settings or entire icon:

Icon	Color	Category	Study List Meaning	Media Item Meaning
	Blue	Complete	Count of study list items marked as "Learned".	Media end reached.
	Green	Active	Count of study list items that are active and not due for review.	Media item position, as an indication of how much of the media has been played. For media items associated with one or more study lists, the count is the total number of study items multiplied by the ratio of the position to the media length. For media items not associated with any study lists, the count is the number of 5 second segments represented by the media position.
	Red	Due	Count of study list items that are active and due for review.	Not used for media items.
	Orange	Future	Count of study list items marked as "New", or media end reached.	Media length minus the media item position, as an indication of how much of the media has not been played. For media items associated with one or more study lists, the count is the total number of study items multiplied by the ratio of the media length and position difference to the media length. For media items not associated with any study lists, the count is the number of 5 second segments represented by the media length minus the media position.
	Pale Goldenrod	Empty	Indicates the associated node hasn't been visited yet.
	White	Disabled	Indicates the associated node has been disabled with respect to status.
	White (center)	Hidden	Indicates that the statistics for the associated node is hidden from the parent.

Media Item Status

The status icon will be shown on media player pages as well:

Recall that for media items, the statistics counts are based on the total number of study items multiplied by the ratio of the position to the media length. For media items not associated with any study lists, the count is the number of 5 second segments represented by the media position.

If the media item has not been played before, the overall status is "Future" and the status icon is all orange. If the media has been played to at least near the end, the overall status will be set to "Complete" and the status icon will be all blue. If the media has been played to not near the end, the overall status will be set to "Active" and the status icon will be a pie chart of green for the part before the current position (supposedly the amount you have heard or seen), and orange for the part after the current position (supposedly the part you haven't heard or seen yet).

Note that when the media is playing, the status icon will be updated in real time.

Status Tooltip

In desktop browsers or devices with a mouse pointer, if you hover the mouse cursor over a status icon, a popup tooltip message will appear, showing a summary of the current status for the associated item, something like this:

Note that the "Status:" line represents an overall status for the associate item. By default it is derived from a priority ordering of the count field categories for those categories that have counts greater than 0. The priority ordering is descending, as follows:

1. Due
2. Future
3. Active
4. Complete

For example, in the status popup shown above, the "Due" category has some items counted, meaning that some study items are due for review, and since the "Due" category has the highest priority, the overall status is shown as "Due". If "Due" had been 0, the next non-zero category in the priority ranking would be "Future", meaning that there are some items that haven't been seen yet. If both "Due" and "Future" were 0, the next category would be "Active", meaning that there are some items that have been seen before but are not due for review yet. Finally, if all of "Due", "Future", and "Active" are 0, but "Complete" isn't, the overall status is "Complete".

Note that there is one more status state that is not shown above. A tree, node, or content items can be marked as "Disabled" with respect to tracking status. Also, items can be marked as "hidden from parent", such that their statistics are not included in the parent's calculations. We'll cover this shortly.

The "Visited" count refers to how many times a study list or media item was "visited", but limited to once per day. Thus, if I had two study sessions on one study list yesterday, and one study session on it today, the total visited count is 2. The nodes and trees sum up their descendents' statistics, so if a node has two study lists with a visited count of 1, the count for the node is 2.

The "Review past due:" line indicates that that there is at least one item past due for review, and gives a time period indication for the item the most past due.

For study lists that don't have any items due for review, but do have at least one due for review in the future, a "Review due in:" line will be displayed instead, showing how long from now the review will be due for the soonest item.

For study lists with no active or due items, neither of the above review time lines will be displayed.

The "Tool source" and "Tool configuration" lines show the current tool source and tool configuration keys.

The "Display type" field shows the current display type mode for the status icon. We'll describe that next.

Display Types

There are actually two display mode types for the status icon, "Study Item" and "Lesson", which have to do with what statistics are used for the display. So far, we've been using the "Study Item" display type, which gets the statistics from the tool study items and fudges something from the media items based on the associated study items or length and the current media position. The other type, "Lesson", uses a lesson as the basic unit instead of a tool study item. and counts lessons in categories of the overall status.

For example, here's a Course page where the status display type was previously set to "Lesson":

When in "Lesson" display type mode, an individual lesson will be a filled circle with a single color based on the overall status for the lesson. The status icon for a course, plan, or group will be a pie chart based on the lesson counts for the different status categories.

In this case, the course has three lessons. One has the "Due" status, and the other two, the "Future" status. Therefore the pie chart shows 1/3 red, and 2/3 orange.

Note that content items will still act as if the display type is "Study Item", thus allowing you to see a more fine-grained represention for study lists and media items.

You can change the display type in the "Progress Management" page, which we will cover next. Thus you can choose your prefered display type.

Progress Management Page

If you click on a status icon, you'll be taken to a progress management page, similar to this:

This page, which is from clicking on a status icon for a study list content item, both shows you the overall status and the categorized status counts, and allows you to change a few things.

The "Display type" field lets you select the display type for this and all other status icons.

The checked radio button show the current overall status, by default determined by the highest-priority non-zero categorized count, as described in the previous section. However, by clicking a different radio button, you can override the default calculated status. This is one way you can mark a study list, group, or entire course or plan as "Complete", even if a content item or a or the descendents of a node or tree has other default statuses. This is an alternate way to put aside the item without having to mark all the study items as "Complete".

If it doesn't make sense to collect the statistic for an item, or you simply want to ignore an item, you can click the "Disabled" radio button to inhibit any statistics collection for the item.

If you check the "Propagate status to children" before you click a radio button, the next radio button click will propagate the status setting to the descendents. However, this will not generally be necessary, as the parent's overridden status will cause the children's overall status to be ignore by the parent.

If you check "Hide statistics from parent", the current item's statistics or status will not be used in any calculations by the parent. For example, say you have a node with an "Expansion" study list, and you don't want its statistics used by the parent, checking this checkbox will effectively hide it from the parent, while still letting you see the statistics directly on the item itself. The status icon for items with this option set will have a white center as an indication of this option.

If the status for an item has been overridden, there will be a "Clear Status Override" button as the last item in the fieldset. Click this to reset the status to the default calculation of the overall status. If you check "Propagate status to chilren" before clicking the "Clear Status Override" button, this will reset the status of the descendents as well.

The "Content Status Counts" pane shows you the current categorized counts for the current item and its descendents. Except for the "Visited" count, you can't change them here. If you want to do so, you can click the "Tool Study List" link in the bottom actions to edit the study item's status.

Note that for study lists, the status counts reflect the counts for the current tool configuration only, which is the last one that was set or used in a study tool. Thus if you go to a study tool page, change the tool configuration, the statisitics will be recalculated to reflect the status saved for the new configuration.

This use of the tool configuration is kind of unfortunate, but since there could be several configurations that you don't use, it would be problematic for JTLanguage to try to figure out which configurations to use, without getting too many unintended "Future" item counts. Perhaps in the future I could have it let you select the desired configurations and average the counts over the configurations. For now, just leave the configuration set to one that you think reflects the status you want to see, be it either the one you have most trouble with, the least trouble with, or something in between.

The "Clear visited" button lets you clear the "Visited" count, which is a count of the days in which this or descendent items were visited.

The "Delete Status" button is an alternative way of reseting the status. It actually deleted the underlying status from the database (not the tool study lists, though). Note it will return you to the previous page as if you had also clicked the "Done" button. Note however, that if the previous page was a course, plan, node, or content item page, the status will automatically be recreated to its default state as part of the process of setting up to display the item. If you click a course or plan's status item from the Courses or Plans page, and then click the "Delete Status" button, the status for the course or plan will not be recreated, and thus ill appear as empty, until you "visit" it again.

For courses, plans, and groups, where they may be more than one lesson, an additional fieldset is displayed, labeled: "Lesson Status Counts". It has an equivalent layout as the "Content Status Counts" fieldset, but shows the counts in units of lessons instead. This fieldset is displayed regardless of the display type, so you can still see either statistics set by bringing up the progress management page.

Course, Plan, Group, and Lesson Options

In the study list "Content Options" page there are two checkbox options that relate specifically to this statistics mechanism:

To get to this page, click the "Edit Study List" button link in the bottom actions, then in the "Select Display" drop-down menu field, select "Content Options".

The "Disable statistics" checkbox, if checked, will disable the corresponing statustics collection for this study list.

The "Hide statistics from parent" checkbox, if checked, will inhibit the parent from using the statistics for this study list in its summation.

Note that the "Course Options", "Plan Options", "Group Options", and "Lesson Options" pages have these same two options. Navigate to these pages from the above-named links on the main pages for these items.

Master Options

Note a lesson master also has the "Disable statistics" and "Hide statistics from parent" checkbox options as well. See them in the "Master Option Descriptors" pane of the main page for a master and also the "Master Content Item" pages for content items as well. When creating new lessons, groups, or courses using this master, these options will initialize the state of these flags in the created items.

Navigate to a "Master" page by going to the "Masters" page via the "Teacher->Masters" menu item, and clicking on the desired master. See the master content item options by adding or editing the desired master content item.

Conclusion

This "User Progress and Status" mechanism should help give you a quick high-level understanding of your study progress for the current course, plan, group, lesson study list, or media item, wherever you are in a hierarchy. Otherwise, it does add some nice color to the pages.

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