[Using Sakai] Randomly assigning students to groups

[Adam Marshall]

another scenario could be to "randomly" create group but with constraints so that (say) the group has an equal number of men and women, or an even mix of ethnic minorities and so on.

adam

| -----Original Message-----
| From: sakai-user-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-user-
| bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Daphne Ogle
| Sent: 01 October 2009 23:25
| To: Marshall Feldman
| Cc: sakai-user; sakai-ux UX
| Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] Randomly assigning students to groups
| 
| Thanks Marsh!  It is very helpful to understand context so your
| scenario is invaluable.
| 
| I've added your use cases and scenario to our documentation.  This
| work is being done for Sakai 3.  As you probably know, timelines for
| early releases are out a year and a fuller Sakai 3 is likely a few
| years out (http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SAKDEV/Sakai
| +3).   So, the bad news is this isn't functionality you'll be able to
| use soon but the good news is that it is captured and will be
| integrated into the Sakai 3 work.
| 
| I'll share designs next week.  Priorities and work schedules are still
| being worked out so I don't have a good feel for when this will be
| implemented yet but I think it's fair to say that you'll be able to do
| the activities you mention down the road in Sakai 3.
| 
| Thanks again,
| 
| Daphne
| 
| On Oct 1, 2009, at 12:46 PM, Marshall Feldman wrote:
| 
| > Hi Daphne,
| >
| > I just responded to Joshua Baron's post by adding a feature request
| > to JIRA. Here's what I wrote:
| >
| > This feature request is modeled after and extends a feature on
| > WebCT. At its core, the request is to add the ability to generate
| > groups automatically. Students (or project site participants) would
| > be assigned to groups at random. The instructor would specify the
| > number of groups or the size of each group, and Sakai would assign
| > students at random to different groups. Besides random assignment,
| > additional assignment methods might be included (e.g., in
| > alphabetical order to divide class into N groups) and/or use certain
| > criteria for constructing groups (e.g., [1] equal numbers of male
| > and female students per group or [2] equal numbers of seniors,
| > juniors, etc. per group).
| >
| > In addition to generating groups automatically, the instructor
| > (maintainer) should be able to select options that would
| > automatically configure tool components related to groups. For
| > example, WebCT has the option of creating a Discussion Board topic
| > for each group to which only group members (and, optionally, the
| > instructor) have access. On Sakai, this option would create a
| > separate forum for each group at the time the group is generated.
| > Sakai might also configure other tools and their components as
| > follows. (1) Announcements -- automatically send an announcement to
| > group members informing them of their new status as group members,
| > (2) Assignments - optionally associate an assignment with the group,
| > (3) Messages - as an alternative to an announcement, send a message
| > to all group members and allow instructor to author message content,
| > (4) Resources - Create subdirectories in a specified path under
| > Resources and automatically give group members +rwx rights in their
| > group's subdirectory, (5) allow instructor the option to schedule
| > events for the group (e.g., a meeting with the group), (6)
| > optionally add subsections to the wiki, with each group having its
| > own subsection and appropriate privileges.
| >
| > As for scenario, much of what I'm looking for is already captured by
| > your current scenarios:
| >
| >   * Instructor creates equally distributed student groups
| >   * Instructor creates small student project teams in 30 person
| course
| >
| > As for what's actually going on, here's the scenario (although I
| > don't think it adds much to the above):
| >
| >   Marsh is teaching a 30-student course in which students work in
| >   teams to construct conference posters. As it is a pure
| >   distance-learning course,
| >   he wants to assign students at random to teams. He also wants to
| >   generate for each team various team-specific tools that the team
| >   members can use
| >   for collaboration. These include a separate forum and Resources
| >   subdirectory for each team. The students will use these to
| >   collaborate on and prepare
| >   their posters. When they are ready to submit their posters, the
| >   students will upload them both to their Resources subdirectory and
| >   the Assignment drop box.
| >   To allow the entire class to view the posters, Sakai would ideally
| >   generate a web page with links to the posters, one link per team,
| or
| >   the instructor may have to do this manually.
| >
| > Thanks for asking about this. Please let me know if and when the
| > tool is ready with these features.
| >
| > Regards,
| >
| >   Marsh Feldman
| >
| > --
| > Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD
| > Director of Research and Academic Affairs
| >
| > Center for Urban Studies and Research
| > The University of Rhode Island
| > email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces)
| >
| >
| >     Contact Information:
| >
| >
| >       Kingston:
| >
| > 202 Hart House
| > Charles T. Schmidt Labor Research Center
| > The University of Rhode Island
| > 36 Upper College Road
| > Kingston, RI 02881-0815
| > tel. (401) 874-5953:
| > fax: (401) 874-5511
| >
| >
| >       Providence:
| >
| > 206E Shepard Building
| > URI Feinstein Providence Campus
| > 80 Washington Street
| > Providence, RI 02903-1819
| > tel. (401) 277-5218
| > fax: (401) 277-5464
| 
| Daphne Ogle
| Senior Interaction Designer
| University of California, Berkeley
| Educational Technology Services
| daphne at media.berkeley.edu
| cell (925)348-4372
| 
| 
| 
| 
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