[Portfolio] Question about SAK-15822

Thu Mar 12 13:57:16 PDT 2009

I won't be on Monday's call, so I will do my best to explain now.  A program matrix is set up with and rows representing the program outcomes  and multiple columns representing each year of the major.  Specific faculty take responsibility for developing assignments to populate specific cells in their courses .  Cells can be populated via direct interaction with the matrix or via assignment linking.  The person responsible for populating the critical thinking cell for first year students used assignment linking.  Students submitted their assignments and they now show up in the cell.  But because most of the students haven't touched their matrix yet, when she tried to convert all cells to pending so she can evaluate them, it didn't work.  Now think ahead a year. A different faculty member is teaching the same course and this faculty member wants students to pick their best work and upload it to the cell.  These students were added to the matrix after the first cohort had already been evaluated, so they are unaffected by the manage status for all users command.  But if we change the initial status to "pending" (either as part of the authoring process or via the status change for all users, all user added to the site will start out with a pending status, which will prevent them from uploading content directly to the cell.  I suppose we could simply change the initial status back to ready, but I'm not sure it make sense to change the default values every time we have a new cohort.  Ideally, I'd like to see the manage status command be group-aware.  With a group aware version, we could instantiate the matrix and do a bulk status change for only the users who need to be evaluated.  

Lynn

==========================
Lynn Ward, Principal Systems Analyst, Community Source Collaboration and Learning
University Information Technology Services
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Information Technology and Communications Complex (IT 218S)
535 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
Phone: 317-278-5713  E-mail: leward at iupui.edu  

-----Original Message-----
From: Beth Kirschner [mailto:bkirschn at umich.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:57 PM
To: Ward, Lynn E.
Cc: osp
Subject: Re: [Portfolio] Question about SAK-15822

I suggest putting this on the agenda for next Monday's call -- I'm  
confused by your statement "the next instructor might decide to have  
students interact with the matrix directly", since I think this  
problem could occur with either approach. Could this wait until then?

- Beth

On Mar 12, 2009, at 3:46 PM, Ward, Lynn E. wrote:

> For this case, we don't necessarily want the cell to start out as  
> pending for users created after the cell is evaluated.  Since the  
> matrix is used over a period of time, the next instructor might  
> decide to have students interact with the matrix directly.  If we  
> set the initial status to pending, the next cohort won't be able to  
> attach artifacts to their cells. I suppose we could reset the  
> initial status depending on who's responsible for facilitating the  
> completion and evaluation of the cell.  Besides, it doesn't solve  
> the problem of producing an expected result when the option is  
> selected.  We also discussed this today and here's what we came up  
> with as a possible solution.
>
> Instead of two radio buttons, provide three:
>
> 1. For this user only
> 2. For all active users
> 3. For all users, both active and inactive
>
> The third option could be hidden via a flag in Sakai properties.   
> Institutions that have very large sites might choose to hide the  
> third option.  We could even set the flag to hidden by default.
>
> Let us know what you think of this option.
>
> Let us know what you think.
>
> And yes, it makes sense to fix SAK-13935 at the same time.
> ==========================
> Lynn Ward, Principal Systems Analyst, Community Source Collaboration  
> and Learning
> University Information Technology Services
> Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
> Information Technology and Communications Complex (IT 218S)
> 535 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
> Phone: 317-278-5713  E-mail: leward at iupui.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Beth Kirschner [mailto:bkirschn at umich.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:24 PM
> To: Ward, Lynn E.; Maurer, Christopher Wayne
> Cc: osp
> Subject: Re: [Portfolio] Question about SAK-15822
>
> Lynn,
>
> I guess I'm still not clear on why setting the initial status wouldn't
> work for your use case, unless you're saying that instructors may not
> know they want to change the status to pending until later? I agree
> that the 'change status for all users' definitely does have unexpected
> behavior (in fact, I stumbled on the same issue when looking into a
> solution for Sabanci).
>
> Noah and I were just discussing an option that brings the two
> proposals together -- what do folks think of this:
>
> (1) Add the ability to set the initial status of a cell to
> "Pending" (and maybe "Complete") when defining a matrix.
> (2) When selecting "Change Status... for all users", also change the
> initial status of the cell. This removes any concerns for performance.
> (3) While you're at it, you might also consider fixing http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-13935
>  (set the default to "For this user only", instead of nothing).
>
> Thoughts?
> - Beth
>
> On Mar 11, 2009, at 3:15 PM, Ward, Lynn E. wrote:
>
>> Although I can see the potential value of an initial pending state,
>> that's not quite what we need at the moment.  We've got a situation
>> in which students are submitting assignments that are linked to
>> program matrices.  Some instructors in the program may also ask
>> their students to interact with particular cells in the matrix
>> directly.  Anyway, the evaluators for the cells with the linked
>> assignments would like to be able to convert all of the cells to
>> pending at one time so they can add evaluations to these cells.  The
>> problems is that a matrix can contain a linked assignment without
>> having been instantiated by the student, so those cells don't
>> convert to pending.    I imagine we can solve this problem by
>> checking to see if the users has any linked assignments in the cell
>> before executing the command.
>>
>> Sabanci University provides another possible use case.  They want to
>> evaluate even though students haven't uploaded or submitted.  Having
>> the ability to convert a specific cells to pending for all users
>> would make it possible to push those cells to the evaluations tool
>> for evaluators to complete their work.  An initial status of pending
>> might work for them, but the ability to control which cells are
>> evaluated when might be preferable.
>>
>> Also, I doubt anyone but the developers would understand why, when
>> you select "change status for all users," you don't see a
>> corresponding status change in every user's matrix.  Until recently,
>> I had no idea that the matrix wasn't created until eh owner touched
>> it.  So, I simply thought the command was broken.    At the very
>> least, the radio button label and the alert text should be changed
>> to something like "for all active users"
>>
>> Lynn
>>
>> ==========================
>> Lynn Ward, Principal Systems Analyst, Community Source Collaboration
>> and Learning
>> University Information Technology Services
>> Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
>> Information Technology and Communications Complex (IT 218S)
>> 535 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
>> Phone: 317-278-5713  E-mail: leward at iupui.edu
>>
>> From: Maurer, Christopher Wayne
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:13 PM
>> To: Beth Kirschner; Ward, Lynn E.
>> Cc: osp
>> Subject: Re: [Portfolio] Question about SAK-15822
>>
>> Well, I can't really make that determination.  That'd be up to Lynn
>> and all the other functional folks...
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> On 3/11/09 9:40 AM, "Beth Kirschner" <bkirschn at umich.edu> wrote:
>> It seems that the behavior that is really desired is not to change  
>> the
>> way 'Manage Status' works for all users, but to allow an initial
>> status of "Pending" in addition to "Ready" and "Locked".
>>
>> - Beth
>>
>> On Mar 10, 2009, at 2:31 PM, Holladay, Bryan Andrew wrote:
>>
>>> I would not advise calling this bulk creation of user's matrices
>>> after creating the matrix, for this will guarantee a slowdown.  I
>>> believe if you trigger this only in the case where someone is
>>> changing the status of a cell and there are missing user matrices,
>>> then this off case wouldn't have a big impact since the majority of
>>> the use cases will not be a complete bulk update (just picking up
>>> stragglers like new users)
>>>
>>> Bryan
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/10/09 2:29 PM, "Maurer, Christopher Wayne" <chmaurer at iupui.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> That is correct.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/10/09 2:25 PM, "Sean Keesler" <sean at keesler.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Seems to me that this would be a time consuming operation *just
>>> once* (when the matrix is published and all the user instances are
>>> created) and that the performance after that would be no different
>>> than if everyone had actually used the matrix.
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:53 PM, janice.smith <janice.smith at threecanoes.com
>>>> wrote:
>>> Hi Chris
>>>
>>> I have not followed all the details of this discussion, but I can
>>> tell you from experience that performance issues with OSP can
>>> literally shut down an instance of Sakai. If we have the choice
>>> between creating something that dramatically complicates performance
>>> and something that does not, I will choose the less complicated
>>> option every time. So far the big performance problems have been
>>> with the wizard. If the matrix starts generating performance
>>> problems (which it has not to date), there will be serious
>>> consequences for portfolio implementations. Also as an FYI, at many
>>> institutions, only some of the users in portfolio sites actually use
>>> the matrix.
>>>
>>> Janice
>>>
>>> Janice A. Smith, Ph.D.
>>> Three Canoes Consulting
>>> 1204 Laurel Avenue
>>> Saint Paul, Minnesota 55104, USA
>>> 651-642-9069
>>> 207-841-6262 (cell)
>>> janice.smith at threecanoes.com
>>> jasmith at mm.com
>>>
>>>
>>> ---- On Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:38:28 -0700 Christopher Wayne Maurer <chmaurer at iupui.edu
>>>> wrote ----
>>>
>>> http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-15822
>>>
>>> As a brief summary, the "manage status for all users" functionality
>>> will only work if the user has visited the matrix in question (and
>>> generated the actual data).
>>>
>>> What do people think about having this trigger the creation of
>>> matrix data first?
>>>
>>> My biggest concern is the performance of creating all that data (if
>>> it doesn't exist).  I would expect that the normal use case here is
>>> that most users will have interacted with their matrix by this
>> point.
>>> But, in practice this may not be the case.  I can obviously create
>>> a site with 1000 users, create a matrix, and immediately change the
>>> status for all users (not the same as changing the cell's initial
>>> status).  This action will create all 1000 user matrices (well, 999
>>> since the author just went to the matrix).
>>>
>>> The case that isn't covered (and I think that it's okay not to
>>> worry about it) is when all the statuses have been changed and a
>>> user is added to the site.
>>>
>>> So, what do people think about this bulk creation?
>>>
>>> Chris
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>>
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