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

[Aaron Zeckoski]

The backend piece is handling this correctly by forcing the items into
the same category, however, the frontend should probably be a lot more
friendly about this. I had it in my head that the frontend used to
stop this from happening but I think the functionality might have been
lost in the recent round of changes.

I think the right way to handle this is to at least warn the user and
it is probably best to simply stop them from putting items from
different categories in the same items group.

-AZ


On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Ellen Yu Borkowski <eyb at umd.edu> wrote:
> 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
> ---
> 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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-- 
Aaron Zeckoski - Software Engineer - http://tinyurl.com/azprofile