Assignments 2

Initial Documentation

What the project aims to accomplish and who should benefit from it - explained in clear, simple language.

Assignment 2 offers four principal advantages over the legacy assignments tool:

1. A redesigned and well-tested UX
2. Thoroughgoing relational data model rather than XML (which the legacy tool uses in some fields) improves performance
3. More direct integration with gradebook services make the integration less brittle and prone to error
4. Some feature additions (eg. gradebook helpers, assignments with multiple versioned submissions)

Which institutions and individuals are committed to it, for how long, and in what roles.

Indiana University (IU) has led the development of this tool since the project's inception. Early work included contributions from Georgia Tech, but the majority has been completed by IU. Design and usability testing has been and continues to be led by Kristol Hancock at IU. The University of Michigan is contributing development work to address remaining gaps between the original Assignment and Assignment2 tools.

What other components or projects, if any, does this project relate to or depend upon?

This project depends largely on the Sakai Gradebook and its APIs. The Gradebook tool does not have to be part of a user's site, but Assignment2 utilizes the Gradebook service and Gradebook-provided helpers for grading activities. Similar to the original tool, Assignment2 also allows some integration with the Schedule and Announcements tool. There is a dependency on K1. An institution may also optionally deploy the Turnitin Content Review implementation in contrib for integration with the Turnitin vended product.

RSF is used at the presentation layer.

Links to any proof-of-concept code, wireframes, or other documentation that may exist at this point.

• Confluence space: Assignment2
• Source Code: https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/assignment2/trunk
• Design Documentation: https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/assignment2/trunk/docs/design/A2.pdf
• Gap Analysis of Assignments and Assignment2

What does the project know and not know about how it will achieve its aims at this point?

Assignment2 is a high priority project at Indiana University. It was added to production at IU in limited pilots for the summer and fall semesters in 2009. In December 2009, it was unstealthed and is currently available for use in tandem with the original Assignments tool. The goal is to make Assignment2 the default assignments tool at IU for Fall 2010. The tool has recently undergone significant usability testing, and IU is actively working on addressing usability concerns. Other tasks in the queue include integration with the Taggable interface for linking OSP matrices to assignments and continued work addressing Assignment/Assignment2 gaps. The University of Michigan has provided development for and continues to work with IU to help address these gaps.

To provide a more robust Gradebook integration, several methods and two helpers were added to the Gradebook tool starting with Sakai 2.6.

The dependency on gradebook raises the possibility of collisions with other gradebook work, especially if it affects the gradebook APIs. Conversations with UC Davis in January 2010 about their gradebook 2 work, along with initial tests of the two projects running together suggests that there won't be a conflict with their project, although we are recommending looking into a new add/edit gradebook item helper to align with the Gradebook2 UI and business rules.

Instructors will have the ability to import assignment information from the legacy Assignments tool via an option within the Assignment2 tool. See the Import: Assignment List section of the design spec for more information on importing from the legacy tool. Assignment2 will not replace the legacy tool in existing sites. We see it as the preferred Assignments tool moving forward.

What public communication methods are being used, how may a curious person contribute to or track the project?

Currently all feature requests and bugs are being tracked in the Sakai Jira via the Assignment2 Contrib Project: http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/ASNN.

Assignment2 communication has largely taken place via the sakai-dev list. The Sakai Foundation confluence and current documentation links are listed at the top of this page.

Ongoing Documentation

Karen Watkins, Michelle Wagner, and Clay talked on March 5, 2010:

• Assignment 2 is moving ahead toward an OnCourse release in May, and there will likely be another release rolled out in August
• It is running in production at IU now as an assignments alternative, and is expected to be the default assignments tool for IU in Q3 2010
• The Turn-it-in integration is in testing phase with a small pilot at IU
• It has gone through several rounds of usability testing and refinement
• It has some functional gaps that still need to be closed, but the documentation on what remains needs to be updated.
• Michigan has been participating in the development work.
• There was some discussion about getting out an independent release that would build and work cleanly against 2.7, around the time of the conference. No promises, but it would help people who would be interested in piloting it.
• Michelle thinks it would take more work to make a version that would work against Sakai 2.6, and would probably not be worth the effort.
• The ability to seamlessly port content from the old assignments tool to the new one is not yet complete. IU has something that works for themselves, but it wouldn't be recommended for general community use.

Update April 16, 2010:

• IU has completed the feature for importing content from the original Assignments tool as defined in the design spec.