The ERTSLab Student Package:

Getting Started

Introduction

ERTSLab is an educational software package for students of the behavioral sciences providing an extensive library of computer based experiments together with detailed information about every experimental paradigm.

This documentation is split into two parts. Read the Setup Guide for Administrators if you want to set up and configure ERTSLab to be used by your students. Read the Quick Start Guide for Users if you want to use ERTSLab for the first time and want to get familiar with the basic principles.

Setup Guide for Administrators

Installing ERTSLab

ERTSLab is a 32 Bit Windows application whereas execution of experimental sessions is performed by calling an external DOS-Runtime Kernel. Nevertheless, ERTSLab and the DOS-Kernel are both capable of running under Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0.

ERTSLab is shipped on two disks. Run Setup.exe on the first disk to install ERTSLab on a local hard drive or a network server.

Starting ERTSLab for the first time

After the ERTSLab installation procedure has finished you may run the program for the first time. The following dialog will appear if ERTSLab has not been started before.

ERTSLab uses so-called Classroom Profiles to manage program-specific settings individually for different student courses. When logging on to ERTSLab for the first time, a profile with reasonable default settings will be created. See the Section Configuring ERTSLab for different Student Classes for information about customizing profile settings for your student course(s).

As an administrator you also determine the password settings. Choose a Login Password to be used by your students when logging on to ERTSLab, and a Master Password that may be used by administrators only! Editing classroom profiles is not available to users that have logged on with the normal login password.

Having left the dialog for password settings, the ERTSLab Auto Installation Manager will appear:

The auto installation manager always appears, after ERTSLab has found one or more new experiment files in its subfolder NewExp during program start. Just click the Install button or the Install All button to let ERTSLab add the experiments you have selected to its library or to add all new experiments respectively. Dismissing the auto installation by selecting Do not install will skip the library update for this time, but you will be prompted for installation again when logging in next time. If, for some reason you want to prevent a new experiment from being added to the library you have to delete the file or move it to another folder.

When running ERTSLab for the first time, ERTSLab will install its standard experiment library by applying this mechanism. Where the auto installation feature really comes in handy for you is after you have downloaded new experiments from the Internet. Then you simply have to make sure to place these files in the NewExp subfolder and start or restart ERTSLab to update your library.

When auto installation is complete the ERTSLab main window will appear. For more information about working with ERTSLab see the Quick Start Guide in the second part of this documentation.

Configuring ERTSLab for different Student Classes

After login with administrator password choose the option Edit Profiles from the Settings menu to open a list of available profiles. The profile currently being in use is initially highlighted.

You may create a new profile, copy, activate, and delete existing profiles by clicking the appropriate button. Click the Edit button to edit the selected profile. A property sheet will open containing five pages. Each page stands for a specific set of options you may want to customize for your student class. See the section Creating and Editing Profiles in the online documentation for detailed information about these options.

General Settings

Use the Long Name to provide a meaningful description for your profile. Note, that during login it is the long name, not the filename of the profile, that will be visible to your students. The Login Password identifies normal users during login. Administrators only may use the Master Password, which gives the privilege to edit profiles.

Result Coding

ERTSLab offers a pre-defined scheme for coding names of result files. You may customize these entries within the profile for distinguishing and categorizing results from different experimental sessions and/or student courses

Directories

In this page, paths are defined to all executable and result files, ERTSLab has to access while running. ERTSLab supports network paths and UNC names allowing access to shared network directories on remote servers.

Pages

ERTSLab can be configured to show only a part of the available information about experiments. Each page stands for a specific information about a paradigm, but only the pages you select are exposed to your students. For example you might not want your students to read about the theoretical backgrounds of an experiment in order to let them do their own studies on the available literature.

Actions after Session

ERTSLab offers automatic generation of case reports at the end of an experimental session. Use this page to enable or disable this feature and to determine, what kind of information to be shown after a session has finished.

Installing your own Experiments

If you have experience in programming ERTS scripts you may wonder how to add experiments you have designed to the ERTSLab library. Here is how it works. You are at least required to supply an experiment fileHID_EXP_FILE (extension EXP) and an experiment definition fileHID_EXD_FILE (extension EXD). See the ERTS User's Manual for detailed information on how to create the experiment file. The following example exemplifies the structure of experiment definition files:

VERSION and TITLE should be self-explanatory. EXT specifies the file extension ERTSLab appends to generated result, case report, and group report files. The key words CASEREP, GROUPREP, and MERGEREP determine command line parameters being passed to ERTSCODE, when creating case reports, group reports, or export files respectively. See the ERTSCODE Manual for detailed information about all available command line parameters. TIME is a parameter that is currently reserved for future use. When typing the source code for your experiment definition file, keep the format shown in the example above and take care, not to insert any white spaces between the colon and the following parameter.

Optionally you may provide one or more of the following files for documentation purposes: Instruct, Design, Theory, Reference, Author. These files have to be either RTF-formatted (extension RTF) or simple text files (TXT). If present, the contents of these files will be shown within the appropriate page of the ERTSLab main window.

Having created all necessary files, open the Windows Explorer and change to the directory ERTSLab has been installed to. Change to the subdirectory Exlib which contains the entire experiment library. Create a new folder, that is named after your experiment, anywhere within the directory hierarchy. Copy the Experiment File (extension EXP), the Experiment Definition File (extension EXD), and optionally one or more documentation files into this folder. Start or restart ERTSLab. Your experiment will appear in the experiment library tree and will be ready to use.

Obtaining System Information

ERTSLab may use different software timers depending on the hardware and software configuration of your computer system. The following timers are supported:

Windows Counter: Provides high timing accuracy under Windows 95 / 98

Pentium Counter: Provides high timing accuracy under Windows NT. This mode requires an Intel Pentiumâ CPU or higher.

Timer Chip: Standard software timer with slightly limited accuracy. This mode is used if neither the Windows Counter nor the Pentium Counter is accessible.

Select System Info from the Help Menu to open a dialog that shows the corresponding information.

Quick Start Guide for Users

Starting ERTSLab

ERTSLab uses so-called Classroom Profiles to manage program-specific settings individually for different student courses. ERTSLab requires you to log in with a valid profile name and a password for that profile each time you start the program:

The most recently used profile will be initially displayed in the drop down list. Select the desired profile from the list and type the user password for that profile in the text field below the profile list. Ask your administrator if you are uncertain about which profile to use or if you have forgotten the login password for the profile you want to load.

After login you can activate another profile at any time without restarting ERTSLab. Simply choose the option Activate Profile from the Settings menu and follow the login steps described above.

The ERTSLab Main Window

The ERTSLab main window is split into two panes. The left pane contains all available experiments in a hierarchical order with files and folders similar to a directory tree. You may browse through the experiment library just as you do when using the Windows Explorer. Folders may contain other folders in order to arrange the material, or executable experiments symbolized by a stop watch icon. The right pane contains up to eight pages, each providing certain pieces of information about the experiment or the category of experiments being selected in the left pane. Simply click on the header of a page to view its contents.

Note, that not all pages mentioned are necessarily visible, but may be hidden. The selection of accessible information depends on the settings of the classroom profile you are working with. You can print all of the accessible information on an experiment at once by clicking on its entry within the library tree with the right mouse button and choosing Print Documentation from the popup menu.

Performing an Experiment

To perform an experiment follow these steps:

Browse through the experiment library in the left pane to select the experiment you want to perform.

Double-click the entry for the experiment or press enter while the entry is selected. If the result page in the right pane is currently active you may also double click the "New..." entry on top of the result file list.

Fill out the dialog form for coding the session as necessary. If an entry is non-editable, it will be predefined within profile settings and you do not have to care about it.

Click the start button to run the experiment.

Looking at Raw Data, Generating Case Reports

Having performed the experiment, you will find the corresponding result file in the result page. (Note, that you will have no access to result files, if displaying the result page is disabled by current profile settings.) By double clicking a result file you will see its contents. For printing a result file choose Print from the File menu.

Following the session you may also want to generate a case report providing basic descriptive statistics. For generating a case report, right click the result file, then choose Generate Case Report from the popup menu. ERTSLab performs the case report and switches to the report page. A double click opens the report for viewing. To print a case report choose Print from the File menu.

ERTSLab Menu Commands at a Glance

This section summarizes all menu commands ERTSLab provides either in its menu bar or by its popup menus that appear after a right mouse button click on an object.

Menu Bar Commands

File Menu

Settings Menu

Help Menu

Popup Menu Commands

Popup Menu opening after Right Click on an Experiment within the Experiment Library Tree

Popup Menu opening after Right Click on single result file

Popup Menu opening after Right Click on a subset of result files

Having selected more than one result file, a right mouse button click opens the same popup menu. However, the option Create Case Report will change to Create Reports providing three new items for data aggregation: