Defining Accountability


In lieu of TCE defined measures of accountability for Web activity, a group has proposed "user sessions" as the best current estimate.

A group of TCE Webmasters and EIT staff met in the fall of 2004 to develop a set of guidelines for reporting TCE Web site accountability statistics. The crux of our recommendations are as follows:

Web servers that provide either static or dynamic educational resources to clientele will be configured to record access logs. The responsible individual will provide the following to Extension administration on a quarterly basis:
* an archival copy of the Web access logs for the reporting period;
* a summary report of access logs that contains the user sessions (WebTrends or AWStats compilations)
* the number of educational modules downloaded (where an educational module is defined by the Webmaster or creators of the material, examples of which might include pdf documents, PowerPoint or other prepared presentations, movie or audio clips (.mov, .wmv, .wav, .rm, .mp3, etc.), or a collection of HTML and graphics that comprise a packaged module, and;
* database queries as summarized by the database software or access logs.

In addition to the numerical data, the group recommended periodic user profiling and satisfaction surveys as well.

Aggie Horticulture has logged user statistics since its inception in October, 1994. These are available from the link near the bottom of the home page . We analyze the stats with Analog because it is fast, free, and allows us to subdivide directories, and we analyze them again with WebTrends because it allows for the calculation of "user sessions."

If you are assigned a folder on the Aggie Horticulture Web site, you will be able to view the statistics for your Web site.

Posted: Tue - May 3, 2005 at 08:24 AM          

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