[Building Sakai] Adding students from previous semesters

[David C. Minugh]

  As I understand the way our version of Sakai works, 
we can automatically add all students enrolled in 
course X to a course site X in Sakai. This is highly 
efficient and a great time-saver.

But in Sweden, at least, it is very common for students 
not to finish a course during the semester. In fact, 
the majority of students have at least one paper or 
test they haven't completed/passed as the next semester 
starts. These students have to take retake exams, which 
are the same as the regular exams for the next 
semester's students, and that in turn means that they 
need access to the course site for the next semester.  
So the obvious thing is to automatically add all 
reregistered students to the new course (they are a 
well-defined group in the university database system). 
However, the current implementation here at Stockholm 
would add *all* students from the previous semester, 
not merely those reregistering. In a course like 
English I, that would mean 300 beginners + 300 from the 
semester before, which means that 150-200 students who 
have already completed the course would still have the 
tab on their list--not very attractive a solution, and 
annoying to those who have already left the course 
behind. At the same time, adding the carry-overs 
manually is prohibitively time-consuming.

The question is thus whether the problem is at the 
local implementation level, or at the Sakai level. Has 
anyone address this or a closely allied issue?

-- 

Lecturer David C. Minugh                E-mail: David.Minugh at english.su.se
Room E 877	                        Tel: (+46) 8 16 36 11
English Department                      Cell phone: (+46) 70 - 23 14 777
Stockholm University                    Fax: (+46) 8 15 96 67