[WG: Sakai QA] [Building Sakai] Assignment resubmission issue

Tue Jun 17 12:06:55 PDT 2014

The question is what options actually make sense. I don’t support confusing faculty by adding additional options that aren’t useful.

It makes sense for faculty to release grades at a specific time, and not to have the students see them until then.

Holding comments is a bit more complex.

I claim that if you allow resubmission, it makes no sense to hold comments until the instructor releases them. Suppose you comment on version 1 and the student submits version 2. What do you do with the comments? The comments may well not apply to the current student submission. I think comments make sense in two cases:

* After the last submission, they become part of final evaluation. It makes sense to hide them until release.
* While resubmission is enabled, the only usage that doesn’t lead to confusion is for the comments to go back to the student to guide the next version.

With the patch I attached, this is more or less what happens.

I didn’t touch handling of the comments interspersed with the student’s submission.  I just checked. If resubmission is not enabled, the interspersed comments are not shown for the current draft. They are shown for previous drafts. I think that makes sense. If no resubmissions are allowed, comments on the last draft could well be final comments that the instructor hasn’t released. Comments on previous drafts must (by definition) have been done when resubmission was allowed, and would have been seen by the students when they were submitting new versions. So showing them again seems OK.

So I would argue that the current code with the two patches I wrote (one that deals with the problem of the instructor not seeing current content) is correct.

However if we wanted to improve things (which I probably don’t recommend for 10.0) two changes could be made, both to display when submissions are disabled (whose code I haven’t touched yet);

* Currenty it shows the student’s more recent and previous submissions. If there are several submissions and they are long, this is a long and complex page. It would be better to use the same format as when resubmissions are allowed, which has a toggle that controls whether to show previous submissions
* The toggle to show previous comments, visible when resubmission is enabled, should also be shown when resubmissions are not enabled. Only the most recent comments should not be shown.

On Jun 17, 2014, at 2:06 PM, Jim Mezzanotte <jmezzanotte at anisakai.com> wrote:

> Hi Neal,
> 
> On the one hand, I can definitely understand the use case here--if
> you're an instructor allowing a resubmission, you probably want
> comments to be displayed, since they will help a student with that
> resubmission.
> 
> But IMHO, the determining question should always be, what is the
> expected behavior for a certain button label/functionality?
> 
> In this case, "save" means two things--it means saving score/comment,
> regardless of release (visibility), but it also means applying the
> resubmission setting, again regardless of release.
> 
> So essentially, "release" only has to do with score/comment
> visibility. And if clicking "save and don't release" results in a
> student seeing a score/comment, that definitely isn't expected
> behavior.
> 
> Maybe the deeper problem is that "save" and "release" functions are
> combined. For example, it might be better to have only a "save"
> button, and then have a separate button or checkmark for releasing
> scores/comments.
> 
> Best,
> Jim Mezzanotte
> Asahi Net International
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:22 AM, Neal Caidin <neal.caidin at apereo.org> wrote:
>> [sakai-dev, sakai-qa, and pedagogy]
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Feedback requested on a bug found with Assignments. If interested please
>> read through and see if the proposed solution/Patch makes sense.
>> 
>> The bug is in Sakai 2.9 and possibly earlier and still exists in the current
>> version of Sakai 10.  We may or may not have time to get a fix into 10.0
>> before we release, in which case the fix would be in 10.1 . Will need QA
>> resources to help with this one.
>> 
>> Problem
>> Assignments tool:  If a student takes an assignment, the instructor grades
>> it and chooses the "Allow Resubmission" checkbox and clicks the  "Save and
>> Don't Release to Student" button , then when the student resubmits the
>> assignment and the instructor goes to look at the resubmitted text, it is
>> the old text from the original submission. The student sees the updated text
>> that they submitted, it is getting saved. Oddly, if the instructor chooses
>> "Save and Release to Student" with the "Allow Resubmission" checkbox the
>> process works fine and the instructor does see the updated assignment text.
>> 
>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-26323
>> 
>> Additional Notes
>> The problem appears to be only with the resubmission of the assignment text
>> and not with attachments, based on my testing so far.
>> There are two places in which an instructor can allow student resubmissions,
>> the first grading page with a list of students, and grading an single
>> assignment. In Sakai 10.0 the first grading page option for submitting
>> assignments is broken, but does work on Sakai 2.9. I'm seeing the same
>> problem with both workflows however, the grading page with list of students
>> and individual grading pages.
>> 
>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-26324
>> 
>> Proposed solution/Patch
>> Fixes the problem described above (SAK-26323) and changes the current
>> behavior slightly. Currently, if the instructor chooses "Allow
>> Resubmission"/"Save and Don't Release to Student" , the student will have
>> the opportunity to resubmit but will not see the instructor comment on
>> his/her original work. The student does see the instructor comment if "Allow
>> Resubmission"/"Save and Release to Student" combination is used.
>> 
>> In the slightly changed, newly proposed workflow, the student would see the
>> instructor comment on the first resubmission attempt, on the grounds that
>> the student should edit their submission to reflect the comment. (I hope I
>> got this right).
>> 
>> This seems like an improvement to me, do you agree?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Neal
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Neal Caidin
>> Sakai Community Coordinator
>> Apereo Foundation
>> neal.caidin at apereo.org
>> Skype me! (but let me know in advance for the first interaction) - nealkdin
>> 
>> 
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