[Contrib: Evaluation System] UCT customizations that you may want in trunk

Wed May 19 05:50:32 PDT 2010

Hi Ellen

Thanks for the feedback and very useful insight.
I think it is important that we all understand the implications of adding something that may be specific to an individual institution and its own workflow that may not "map" to other institutions in general.  
I agree about institution specific changes that change the workflow blueprint for the Course Evaluations tool. if you take a look at EVALSYS-921 I have added global flags for the items that would cause such a change. These changes are:
In email settings page:
Ability to stop the initial email notification when a an evaluation opens.
In Institutional Specific settings section:
- (revisions: 61086, 61139, 61140, 61143, 61152) only show assignable sites that are like the current site eg: if user is in a 2009 course site the assignment list must show only 2009 course sites. This helps reduce the list and keep it focused. Fixes the problem of users who have a huge site listing (eg 50). reduces time wasted looking up site info at a large scale. 

Further to that, they have been switched off by default.
There is one specific concern in regards to item 6 below.  It is my understanding that back in February our developer contacted you about this issue along with a concern that your implementation not only stops the available email messages from being sent, but it also prevents reminders and due jobs from being scheduled.  This, of course, for us means that this function has been "broken" as we need that capability.  It is nice to have the feature to stop the available email, yet we need the other functionality that goes with that job to continue to function.  We had created EVALSYS-886 to address this issue but had not committed code yet because we are in the final stages of testing.  I think it is best to follow up on this particular item to be sure reminders and due jobs are being scheduled as required.
Item 6 is turned off by default (as stated above), hence will not affect current workflow. It also will not stop reminders and due jobs. 
It is important that all changes, no matter how small, be put out there for discussion - one example is the change in template edit view where the term "blocks" was changed to "groups" for terminology. 
Oops, I hope your help docs were updated :) A bit of history: this change has been in trunk for more than a year now and it's a result of this commit ( http://source.sakaiproject.org/viewsvn?view=revision&root=contrib&revision=58542 ). Trunk can be reverse-merged to message bundle r58541 to get beck to using the term 'block' but this may require a vote from the rest of the list.

I agree that the merge process needs to be as public and transparent as possible and am for the idea of a conference call around these changes. Since sending out the merge notification, I did not get back any feedback from the community until now.

Precautions have been put in place to ensure that no current trunk functionality has been overwritten or changed.

If we still need a teleconference, please let me know and I can set up a Doodle around the date/time. 

Regards

--
Lovemore Nalube
OLE Developer (Vula)
University of Cape Town
http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/LovemoreN

>>> On 5/18/2010 at 10:49 PM, in message <E7FED8AA-E0F8-42F8-B2FA-69D208141993 at umd.edu>, Ellen Yu Borkowski <eyb at umd.edu> wrote:

Lovemore

Here at Maryland, we have just completed our 12th production evaluation period and will be starting our 4th year of course evaluations via EVALSYS.  Overall, I have some concerns about the timing of this request.  When Michigan proposed merging their branch changes into trunk, there were several conference calls around each item they proposed to merge and discussions around what it really meant and what the implications were.  I think it is important that we all understand the implications of adding something that may be specific to an individual institution and its own workflow that may not "map" to other institutions in general.  So, I am a bit wary of having this request come at this time asking for a merge to occur by July 27 with no phone calls scheduled to discuss each item below in detail.  This is a bad time for us to check these out because we just finished our course evaluation process for this semester and are busy pulling reporting together.

There is one specific concern in regards to item 6 below.  It is my understanding that back in February our developer contacted you about this issue along with a concern that your implementation not only stops the available email messages from being sent, but it also prevents reminders and due jobs from being scheduled.  This, of course, for us means that this function has been "broken" as we need that capability.  It is nice to have the feature to stop the available email, yet we need the other functionality that goes with that job to continue to function.  We had created EVALSYS-886 to address this issue but had not committed code yet because we are in the final stages of testing.  I think it is best to follow up on this particular item to be sure reminders and due jobs are being scheduled as required.

I think we've discussed this in the past and probably discussed this at our BOF we had last summer at the Sakai conference, but I think we may need to discuss an overall process to follow now that we seem to have more development activity happening at multiple institutions.  It is important that all changes, no matter how small, be put out there for discussion - one example is the change in template edit view where the term "blocks" was changed to "groups" for terminology. I didn't really discover this until I was doing a demo and realized I was telling them "blocks" and they were asking about "groups".  "Groups" is already a term used for "assigning groups" in an eval so this is confusing.  Can we change that back to "blocks"?

My general concern is whether we need to put a little more structure on this process.  I am aware we all have much on our own plates, but I think we need some discussion on how we move forward to help this product mature in a fashion that is effective for all of us.

Ellen

On May 12, 2010, at 6:29 AM, Lovemore Nalube wrote:

Dear Everyone

In the past year, UCT has worked on features for evals that have settled in the branch ( http://source.sakaiproject.org/viewsvn/uct/evaluation-mar09/?root=contrib ). We now look to either update our branch with trunk or merge to trunk and run our production build on trunk. We rather prefer the latter so that we take advantage of improvements and fixes in trunk. As such we would like to here from you if the following updates can be merged into trunk. Of course we can place global switches to these features to have them switched off by default.

Unique changes in UCT branch are (EVALSYS-914 ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-914 )): 

1. Changes to the Assign Eval to Group view EVALSYS-762 ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-762 ): 
a. (r61084) Move the current site to the top of the assignment list. In the Assign Eval to Group view, the current site that a user is in is brought to the top of that list. Making it easier for a user to select current presence. 
b. (61086, 61139, 61140, 61143. 61152) only show assignable sites that are like the current site eg: if user is in a 2009 course site, the assignment list must show only 2009 course sites. This helps reduce the list and keep it focused. Fixes the problem of users who have a huge site listing (eg 50). reduces time wasted looking up site info on a large scale. 
c. (63781) EVALSYS-823 ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-823 ) Prevent site assignment if site does not have eval takers. TODO: this must not happen to an anonymous eval (see EVALSYS-915 ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-915 )). 

2. Changes to the Preview Evaluation/Template view: 
- (6189) Add text in explaining that sample Lecturer/TA names will be replaced with real names when the evaluation is created. See screenshot. ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/attachment/20301/Add+text+in+explaining+sample+Lecturer+and+TA+names.jpg )

3. Changes to the Template Editing view: 
a.  (61892, 61893) truncate the names of scales when adding/editing a Rating Scale so that the lightbox popup width/frame stays intact. This also helps to avoid horizontal scrolling when the scale names are too long. Truncation is to 90 chars. 
b. (66259) EVALSYS-860 ( http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-860 ) Ability to copy (duplicate) template items/questions. For discussion see: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/evaluation/2010-February/000290.html 

4. Changes to the Lecturer/TA selections: 
- Through various updates, the selections panel has been moved to be site specific, user specific (ability to choose which people get presented to the takers) and UI is in a lightbox popup. 

5. Alert user if site/evalgroup is unpublished: 
- in UI show an alert message/icon wherever a site is unpublished ie: these views; assignments, take eval, control evaluations. 

6. Ability to stop the initial email notification when a an evaluation opens. 
- Very useful in cases where eval is released to a large class but the lecturer/user intends on notifying students through other means. 

We are looking to make this move to trunk by the beginning of our second semester on 27 July.

Thanks

--
Lovemore Nalube
OLE Developer (Vula)
University of Cape Town
http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/LovemoreN

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Ellen Yu Borkowski
Director, Academic Support
Office of Information Technology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD  20742-2411
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Email: eyb at umd.edu
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This e-mail is subject to the UCT ICT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 4500. This e-mail is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If the e-mail has reached you in error, please notify the author. If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail you may not use, disclose, copy, redirect or print the content. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT it is sent by the sender in the sender's individual capacity.

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