[Contrib: Evaluation System] Instructor vs Course category and grouping - functioning as designed?

[Ellen Yu Borkowski]

Hi everyone,

This question may need to be addressed by Aaron as he may be the only one who knows the original design for this.  Here's a scenario in which I've created several instructor category items and course category items and I am now working in the template adding items, grouping, etc.  The scenario below are steps taken after opening a template to edit:  [Note:  for this scenario, all course and instructor category items all have the same scale.]

1.  Add several course category items to the template
2.  Add several instructor category items to the template
3.  Select a course category item because I want to group them.  I select all course category items along with one instructor category item (by mistake).
4.  Select "Create group" button.
5.  I am given the open in the dialog box to select (again) the category that I want the grouped items to be in.  I select "course"
6.  I save the group and start checking my work.
7.  In looking at the preview, I notice that I have included an instructor item by mistake in my course item grouping.
8.  I go back and ungroup the items and regroup the course items.
9.  In going back to check the one instructor item I had mistakenly put into the course grouping, I notice it is now marked as a course category item instead of an instructor item (as it was originally defined).

Now, if I didn't know the tool so well, I may not have gone back and checked the individual instructor category item to make sure it was marked correctly in the template.  I should not that in the "My Items" database, the particular item is still defined correctly as an instructor category item.

Question is this - is this working "as designed"?  I think I've had this conversation with Aaron in the past, but can't remember if this was designed in this fashion.  

For the community - do you think a "warning" dialog box should appear when items of different categories are grouped together?  I personally think this is needed, but that is because of the workflow at Maryland.  This may not be the case for others, but I wanted to toss this out for discussion.

Ellen
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Ellen Yu Borkowski
Director, Academic Support
Office of Information Technology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD  20742-2411
301.405.2922 (o)
301.830.0196 (c)
301.405.0720 (f)
Email: eyb at umd.edu
http://www.oit.umd.edu/as/staff/Ellen.html


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