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Professor Colin Turner edited this page Sep 4, 2018 · 20 revisions

Welcome to the WAM

There isn't much here at present. I'm focusing more on development at this time. The code is generally fairly well documented.

What is WAM?

WAM started life as a Workload Allocation Modeller, although it is now developing to have other features intended to provide support for Academic Schools and Departments. WAM is Free and Open Source, and is designed to be flexible to the needs of many Higher Education Providers.

Note that WAM is not a Workload Allocation Model. The Model is the decision of that School or Department, and WAM is capable of embracing, measuring and facilitating a wide range of Models.

Basics

The process of download and installing WAM will be discussed elsewhere. Supposing you have it installed, with a Superuser account, you now need to configure it. Much of the detailed configuration is tucked away in the Admin Interface at the bottom.

Work Packages

You will need to create a WorkPackage. This allows you to segment activity both to collections of people, and to time periods. Mostly a package will be used to define the work of an individual department for an individual academic year.

Staff Groups and Members

You will then want to define one or more staff groups. This could be, for instance "Engineering Academic Staff" or "Computing Technical Staff" or really, whatever you need. Try to use Groups that are aligned with Work Packages. For instances, Work Packages could be "Engineering 2017/2018" or "Computing 2016/2017". The same groups of staff may be used across packages, but it is suggested you do this only chronologically.

You can also add staff members to your Work Package. WAM supports most external authentication that would be typically used in Universities to work with your institutions single sign on.

Programmes and Modules

You will then want to add your Courses / Programmes, and the Modules. It's likely you will use Programmes and Modules in subsequent years, but with tweaks. Don't worry, you can "clone" one year's Work Package to the next and then modify, add and delete as necessary.

External Examiners

You might then wish to add External Examiners. If you are using remote authentication (single sign-on), you will need to have your External Examiners added to that system too.

Next steps

Once you have configured the basics of your system, you will want to begin to get it to work for you. You might want to explore next:

  • Working with Staff Workloads
  • Setting and Managing Task Reminders
  • Working with Assessments