Custom Graphical Views of Feedback Data

Gr8Education · Post by **Gr8Education** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:12 am

I am in the middle stages of investigating possible software solutions for a 360 degree feedback project in the education sector. Under consideration at the moment to deliver this project is FileMaker, Caspio, Aware IM or SharePoint.

Of particular interest is the ability to display the results from student feedback on around 25 values to teachers in a variety of graphical and interactive formats. I've had a hunt around the Aware IM site but can't seem to see examples of displayng results on a web page graphically.

Can anyone here comment for me?

Thanks and regards

aware_support2 · Post by **aware_support2** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:06 pm

Aware IM has a powerful report designer that allows building complex reports including multi-level nested sub-reports and grouping of data. The reports can be generated as ready-to-print PDF files or as HTML pages displayed in the web browser. The latter can include hyperlinked elements allowing the users to dynamically navigate to related information, for example to drill down from an aggregate report to a more detailed level. This is a standard Aware IM functionality and no knowledge of programming is required to build comprehensive reports with hyperlinks.

As far as graphical presentation is concerned, the reports accept plug-in extensions written in Java. The plug-ins can access data in the report and add any required functionality such as generating a chart as an image, which can then be displayed as an integral part of the report. For a Java programmer it would be a relatively straightforward task to write an Aware IM report plug-in that would effectively be an adaptor between Aware IM and some existing Java class library (such as JFreeChart) that generates charts from a data array. Aware IM Programmers Reference has detailed information on developing Aware IM plug-ins including the report extensions.