RE: WAC

[v-balester@tamu.edu (Valerie Balester)]

Sally, we have a pretty good computer person working for us, and he
designed a relational data basis for our records.  We haven't tested it
yet, but it looks very promising.  It is a FileMaker program.  Information
we are looking at includes the client name and SS# (which could, if needed,
be linked to sociological data kept by the university, for example
ethnicity); length of session (we can easily get an average length);
teacher name, course name, when applicable; student major; general areas
worked on (e,g, organization, punctuation, etc) and type of document (e.g.,
resume, paper for a class, etc). We can get infomration like how many hours
a given tutor actually saw clients or how many of our student contact hours
available were actually used, as well.

I don't know if this is true, but I believe this data base takes some
expertise to set up.  it is "relational" because we can enter data into
separate data bases (for example, a tutor schedule, an instructor's list, a
student records) and the data bases can share that information.

Valerie Balester
Director of Writing Programs
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4227
(409) 845-3155
(409) 862-2292 FAX
v-balester@tamu.edu