2012-07-24 Meeting Notes

Design Feedback

- "For these users" label is confusing - who are they? Suggestion to remove

- UI becomes too cluttered when someone needs to make assessment available to certain groups/sections. Suggestion to remove "This assessment can be taken by through "For these users," and in place of "For these users," present pull-down list of which group (all site members included as option) can take assessment. Selecting an option from pull-down list would then display corresponding row of date/time/time limit parameters. Once done setting parameters, make values uneditable to denote "done." This approach would handle group exceptions and the "Add exceptions…" button would handle individual exceptions.

 -Automatic submission of saved assessments: UI shows current behavior but participants during call described local customizations, indicating that current behavior is not meeting needs. Seminole State College has turned off option from UI. Indiana University has changed logic so that auto submit happens after due date if late submission is not allowed and after retract date if late submission is allowed. Not sure if users can opt in to auto-submit or not. One caller mentioned that his institution is running Sakai 2.8 and selecting a combo of settings options caused the auto-submit cron job not to run. Stanford Univ had action item of reviewing a patch for SAMigo 2.9 that resolved a bug wrt auto-submit and would report back to see if it might address problem caller reported. The patch is as follows:

SAM-1088

Problem that it's addressing:

1) Instructor creates new assessment

2) Explicitly sets a due date different from the retract date

3) Student begins taking assessment between due date and retract date

4) The auto-submission quartz job is running every five minutes

5) The student will receive a Data Discrepancy error (you can replicate by manually running the quartz job as admin user).

1) Auto-submit quartz job only works after the retract date. This means that students will never see data discrepancy because of auto-submit code. This is great.

How problem is addressed:

2) If late submissions are allowed, make sure instructor sets retract date. Warn if not.

3) If late submissions not allowed, set retract to due date.

4) If code auto-submits a late submission, make sure to set as late.

5) If student's last work on assessment was before due date but they forgot to click submit, do not mark as late.

So, this patch seems equivalent to Indiana's local patch. We might consider allowing institutions to decide whether or not to make auto-submit an opt-in/out option.

 -Whether or not to pre-fill date fields when making exception: The proposed design pre-filled dates when making exceptions to provide user with a starting point. However, pre-fill logic could get complicated and if UI has many rows of pre-filled dates, user might not know which one(s) they need to edit. Best to leave fields blank and force user to provide values.

-Provide ability to define time limit for exceptions as % of standard time or allow user to select hr/minutes via UI: Those participating in call wanted both, to provide the greatest flexibility across potential use cases. Indiana proposed providing ability to add group defaults (e.g., Group Y gets 3x more than rest of class) in SAMigo (as opposed to Section Info). When someone selects Group Y to grant exception to, then UI could show the time limit in hours/minutes or as percentage (as per proposed design).

-Retract Date: with the new design, Retract date = last date when late submissions are allowed. Label has changed as well to "Late submissions accepted until". Indiana proposed that Retract be treated as a status, separate and apart from any date. Proposed design did not show "Retract Now" since it's only addressing unpublished assessment. Need to address in next iteration.