[Using Sakai] Using Sakai List -- Encouraging Development on Specific JIRA Topics

[Regan, Alan]

Dear Using Sakai List,

I am writing to see if there is community interest in several existing feature requests on JIRA.  If you agree that these features would benefit your community, I encourage you to vote on the tickets to show your support.

"Worksites need to support locale preferences"
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-10393
Created: 2007
Issue: Professors should have the ability to select the language of a given site. This is incredibly important in foreign language classes that want to immerse the student in the language. The community is seeking an improvement to add this functionality at the site level as a core element.  The mechanism should be accessible in the "Site Info" tool of the site so that instructors or site managers can select the language. This selection would override any user language preference while inside that specific site.

"Support for Group Assignments and Grading"
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-7938
Created: 2006
Issue: Group papers or projects are common within higher education. The community is asking for new functionality to be added to the Assignments and Gradebook tools for meet this need.
(I don't know about your institution, but this is one of the most commonly requested features at my university.  That and peer review and the next item on the list -- submitting a paper on behalf of a student.)

"Allow instructor to submit assignment on behalf of student"
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-7475
Created: 2006
Issue: A student can't submit a paper or item to an assignment for some reason. Rather than wait for the student to resolve the problem (which may not be possible in the event of a medical issue), professors want the ability to submit a paper they may have received electronically via email.  This is critically important if a content review service (like Turnitin) is being used by the professor.

"Offer solution for delegated support and administration"
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-20412
Created: 2011 (however a previous ticket was created in 2006)
Issue: Schools and institutions have varying needs for supporting a collaborative learning platform.  The service needs a well-designed solution to offer delegated or distributed support options for schools, departments, or other sets of users or sites.  There are many workarounds in place, but these are clunky and sometimes create additional system or personnel overhead.  We are seeking a solution to this very important support issue.

"Gradebook - Student Grade Report - items assigned to groups in Tests & Quizzes, Assignments, and Forums should only appear to group members"
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-19668
Created: 2010
Issue: Students are seeing listings for all gradebook items, even if they are not a member of the specific group for an item.  If a professor has limited an exam, forum, or assignment to a select group, students that are not part of those groups are seeing those items in their grade reports.  This can create student confusion or even panic.  I am recommending that the student grade report should exclude these items from their view.

***********

Of course, there are many other wonderful feature requests out there.  These are some of the big ticket items that our faculty have asked about regularly.  If your faculty have also asked for the above features, please cast your vote.  Perhaps we can get these into 2.9?

Thanks for listening!

Sincerely,

Alan Regan, MFA
Manager, Technology and Learning
Information Technology
Pepperdine University
(310) 506-6756

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/sakai-user/attachments/20110406/c688e73b/attachment.html