[Building Sakai] grade book / grade book 2 compatibility

Mon Apr 16 14:34:15 PDT 2012

I agree that everything special for GB2 should have been in the edu-service
to begin with.

But if the gradebook2 team had added these features to the edu-services
(leaving someone else to change GB1 UI later), then people wanting these
features wouldn't have been able to use them anyway until they upgraded
edu-services to the newest version. This generally only happens on a major
upgrade since so many other things depend on these api's. And then they
would have had to maintain multiple versions of gradebook2, as we don't
have a best practice for handling old apis (reflection? wrappers?).

Since so many things depend on the edu-services api, changing this out is
non-trivial. This really feels like an impossible problem for CLE without
fixing the component/shared model and using something different (since it
would all be bad hacks around that), but last time that was tried OAE was
the result! ;) Ideally GB2 could depend on any version of edu-service it
needed, while GB1 could depend on any version of edu-service it needed
(assuming a compatible data model), but currently we only can deploy one
shared component.

Based on the survey, many places run on 2 year old versions of Sakai and
this is something everyone on the dev lists ask about.

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Aaron Zeckoski <azeckoski at unicon.net>wrote:

> Maybe it just means they should develop that feature in the service
> and then if GB1 wants to use it they can. I think the key here is that
> the tool should really only do UI rendering stuff and anything related
> to the logic of the gradebook (calculations, storage, etc.) should
> really be in the service.
>
> -AZ
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Bryan Holladay <holladay at longsight.com>
> wrote:
> > I think it's unreasonable to expect these two tools to work the same
> > and be 1:1 on features.  Let's say there is a feature X that GB2 wants
> > to implement that modifies how the grades are calculated.  Does that
> > mean in order for that feature to be included into GB2, that they are
> > required to write the equivalent feature for GB1 in order for the
> > calculations to be the same in a site that is running both tools.
> >
> > -Bryan
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com>
> wrote:
> >> We probably should figure out the best way to handle this. This is the
> only
> >> tool that I know in Sakai of where the new tool depends on the data
> model
> >> and services for the old tool but also does some things differently and
> >> doesn't implement everything.
> >>
> >> There was another local feature request that we implement "grade
> assignment
> >> overrides" and what this would do is allow an instructor to override a
> grade
> >> that comes from an external tool in the gradebook without going back to
> the
> >> external tool. If we had a new field and data element for this, then it
> for
> >> sure would cause an inconsistency betweeh GB1 and GB2.
> >>
> >> The only other way I could think of to implement this idea would be to
> have
> >> each tool that publishes grades to gradebook (assignments/assessments)
> not
> >> use their local copy of the grade data if they were linked to the
> gradebook,
> >> instead reading and relying on the gradebook data. This is kind of how
> >> Assignment 2 works, requiring you to link up your Assignment 2
> assignment to
> >> an entry in the Gradebook if you want grading.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure why assessment and assignment originally stored their
> grades?
> >> Maybe because they were written before a central gradebook existed? I
> feel
> >> like I'm leaning more on the option of not changing the data model
> >> (overrides) and instead either modifying every tool as described to not
> have
> >> externally maintained data (so that the data can be edited both in
> Gradebook
> >> and in the tool that created it), or changing the API so that the tool
> can
> >> make the decision for compatibility with some tools that aren't
> converted,
> >> and just converting the important core tools.
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 2:47 AM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I think it's cause some of the calculations of the final grades
> specially
> >>> were done in the user interface layer for Gradebook2 rather than in the
> >>> edu-services layer. And some of the features that I'd mentioned (extra
> >>> credit, drop lowest/highest and probably others) were added afterward
> >>> (mostly by Bryan) to the actual edu-services for gradebook [1] [2],
> but the
> >>> implementation and the calculation likely wasn't identical. And unless
> you
> >>> had the newest (trunk) version of Sakai, it likely would be missing
> some
> >>> calculations that Gradebook2 has.
> >>>
> >>> And also for instance Gradebook2 doesn't support keep highest/drop
> >>> highest, which was also added [3]. So depending on which options the
> >>> instructor used the grades may appear different in the final
> calculation,
> >>> which could be concerning to a student. The actual points though would
> be
> >>> the same and nothing would be lost or missing.
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-19964
> >>> [2] https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-21225
> >>> [3] https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/GRBK-669
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Steve Swinsburg
> >>> <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Interesting, a notice should definitely be made about this. I've used
> >>>> them in the same site and didnt notice anything strange, but it was
> only for
> >>>> simple grading.
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't understand how the calcs can be different though...
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers
> >>>> Steve
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my iPhone
> >>>>
> >>>> On 14/04/2012, at 11:48, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Agreed, both of these use the same basic data model, however there are
> >>>> some features that are may be present in Gradebook2 (or even in
> Gradebook)
> >>>> which aren't implemented in the other. So if one class was using both
> tools
> >>>> in the same site the calculations could be wrong. The one I know that
> was
> >>>> different was drop highest and lowest. This was for sure implemented
> >>>> differently in GB1 verses GB2. It wasn't even present in GB1 until
> 2.9.
> >>>>
> >>>> GB1 in trunk also has some features for extra credit (
> >>>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-21225 ) and GB2 also has
> these but
> >>>> implements these differently so like Bryan said if you're using one
> of the
> >>>> tools in one particular version of Sakai you might see one set of
> scores and
> >>>> another set in the other tool, which can be very confusing for
> students.
> >>>>
> >>>> At Michigan we'd generally strongly recommend that if an instructor
> >>>> placed Gradebook2 that they remove Gradebook. I even wanted to put up
> a
> >>>> warning message on both tools that notified the instructor pick one
> and
> >>>> either hide or remove the other if both were placed.
> >>>>
> >>>> -Matthew
> >>>>
> >>>> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Steve Swinsburg
> >>>> <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I've used both tools in the same site and haven't had an issue so
> far.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers
> >>>>> Steve
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sent from my iPhone
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 14/04/2012, at 6:37, Bryan Holladay <holladay at longsight.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> > I haven't tested lately, but for the most part the two tools don't
> >>>>> > work well together (i.e. if you put both GB1 and GB2 in the same
> >>>>> > site).  They use the same edu-services layer, however, there are
> >>>>> > discrepancies on which data columns they use (some overlap),
> >>>>> > calcuation methods, etc that cause them not to sync well
> (especially
> >>>>> > for more complex GB settings).  It would be nice to see those
> resolved
> >>>>> > (and theoretically it should be possible), but it may be a huge
> task
> >>>>> > given the complexity of the calculations and data structures.
> >>>>> >
> >>>>> > -Bryan
> >>>>> >
> >>>>> >
> >>>>> > On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Charles Hedrick <
> hedrick at rutgers.edu>
> >>>>> > wrote:
> >>>>> >> As far as I can tell, Gradebook and Gradebook 2 use the same basic
> >>>>> >> data. To what extent are they compatible? GB 2 has a couple of
> additional
> >>>>> >> features, but they are being moved to GB, partly in 2.9 and
> partly in 2.10.
> >>>>> >> Are the two systems compatible as long as only features that are
> available
> >>>>> >> in both are being used?
> >>>>> >>
> >>>>> >> We currently have both available. GB 2 has more features, but
> we've
> >>>>> >> seen issues with it on some devices. If we could tell students
> that they can
> >>>>> >> see the data in GB even if the faculty member uses GB 2, that
> would be
> >>>>> >> helpful.
> >>>>> >>
> >>>>> >> _______________________________________________
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> --
> Aaron Zeckoski - Software Architect - http://tinyurl.com/azprofile
>
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