[Contrib: Evaluation System] Proposal for revising groups provider

[Jim Eng]

There has been discussion on the list over the last couple days about the way that the groups provider works in 1.3.x.  That discussion revealed that for some adopters (Rutgers and Michigan, if not others), the current behavior is inadequate.  The groups provider supplies lists of users who are evaluators or evaluatees with respect to particular evaluation. There are times when the list of participants in a course may change (mostly because of students dropping or adding classes) between the time that an evaluation is assigned and the time that participants access it.  Elsewhere in Sakai, providers are consulted dynamically so changes like that have a rapid impact on course-site memberships and other permissions decisions.  

I am proposing that we develop a mechanism that would enable similar behavior within evaluations.   I have outlined the need in a JIRA ticket:  

	http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/EVALSYS-1031

I have also added a comment to that ticket about a possible approach.  My proposal is that we not change the current default behavior, but that we allow admins to specify periodic updates of group memberships from the group provider.  The details would need to be worked out, but I'd like to invite discussion of this proposal with the goal of moving it forward for inclusion of a mechanism to achieve these objectives in the 1.4 version of evalsys.

Thanks.

Jim