Associate Conversations Topic with Gradebook Item

The Conversations tool has a lot of great features. However, it still has a few feature gaps with the Discussions tool - the most significant of those being the ability to grade Conversations. The development of the centralized grading service, so that the Sakai Grader UI can be used within Conversations and other Sakai tools is still in the works. In the meantime though, it is unlikely that Conversations will gain wide-spread usage until the grading feature gap is addressed. This Jira proposes that we implement a temporary grading functionality, similar to what is used in Discussions, which would allow instructors to associate a Conversations Topic with an existing Gradebook Item in the same manner that is currently possible in Discussions. This would close the grading feature gap until the more comprehensive centralized grading service solution is completed.

See the mockups below for the proposed IU. (Note: Students would not see the Grading options. Only instructors or users with the “Grade posts” permission would see those items.)

Add/Edit Topic screen showing a Grading section in the settings that allows the instructor to select from a dropdown menu of existing gradebook items to associate with the topic.

View of post with Grade button visible next to the user’s name. The Grade button would only display for topics which have an associated gradebook item saved in the settings.

View of the Grading Screen which pops up when the Grade button is selected.