[Using Sakai] Sections and permissions

Thu Oct 30 10:38:46 PDT 2014

Hi Nadine,

We have the same exact use case that you are describing, we usually have 
a site for a course with different sections and each section has a 
different instructor. Some times, sections within a site might want to 
do things differently and some tools allow them to do it perfectly 
(announcements, resources, assignments), some others with difficulties 
(messages, forums, schedule) and others simply won't (gradebook 
-different gradebook structures-, chat, webcontent). I did some research 
about permissions long time ago and as you are already seeing each tool 
handles permissions for sections in a different way and therefore, you 
can achieve different levels of group awareness for each tool.

I'll share some of the info that I had in my document, maybe something 
have changed since then but I don't think so. Please let me know if you 
think that something can work in a different way. I skipped the 
permissions that you need to set in order to achieve the configuration 
that I describe here but let me know if you want to know something from 
an specific tool.

Regarding your comment: Also, I thought that since the teachers were 
assigned to sections, even if they selected "Site", it would only be 
send to the section for which they have rights,  but it doesn't seem to 
be the case.
Thats one of our biggest problems, some tools allows them to do things 
just for their sections but they believe that Sakai handles that by 
default. i.e.: A teacher that adds something to resources believe that 
it will be posted just to his section (by default it goes to the whole 
site). i.e.: A student sending a message to the 'instructor role' 
thinking that it will go to his teacher (all teachers from all sections 
are included in the 'instructor role')... Use cases like that, we get 
them every day :-( .

Hope this helps a bit.
Good luck,
Mariano

I translated this very fast from my old document, sorry if you find any 
typos or some information is a bit confuse.

    SECTION INFO

    -No way to control which sections can be seen over there. If a user
    sees the list of participants, it will see all participants of the
    site, not just his section members.

    ANNOUNCEMENTS (SECTION AWARE)

    -A user can post announcements just to his sections. It will only
    see announcements from his sections. You CAN restrict them from
    adding an announcement to the whole site.

    SCHEDULE (SECTION AWARE)

    -By default, a user add an event to the whole site. When posting
    events, you can configure permissions in a way that it will show
    only his sections but there is NO WAY to restrict them for adding an
    event to the whole site.

    https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Groups+vs.+Sections(Search
    for schedule)

    RESOURCES (SECTION AWARE)

    -If a user can add a resource, it will allow him to add it to any
    section, whether is a member of that section or not. If the user
    adds the resource to a section that he is not member of, he won't be
    able to see the resource any more. Lets say is section aware on the
    view side but not for adding resources.

    WEB CONTENT

    -No section aware at all.

    TAREAS (SECTION AWARE)

    -Same as Schedule. By default, a user add an assignment to the whole
    site. You can configure permissions in a way that it will show only
    his sections but there is NO WAY to restrict them for adding an
    assignment to the whole site.

    MESSAGES (SECTION AWARE)

    -A user can send a message to everyone in the site. Since 2.9 there
    are some new permissions that allow you to configure if you want to
    show (all site, groups, roles) to an specific role. We see a
    potential problem here because when you have the scenario that you
    described before, a student from section 1 will be able to send
    messages to a instructor from section 2 or students from section 2
    which might be not what you want in most of the use cases. We've had
    several complaints about this, specially for the 'all particpants'
    and the 'roles' options since all sections are mixed in there.

    https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Groups+vs.+Sections(search
    for messages).

    FORUMS (SECTION AWARE)

    -Kind of complicate to achieve section configuration in here. You
    set the permissions in sakai.properties mapping your own roles to
    default forum roles.
             mc.default.Estudiante=Contributor
             mc.default.Invitado=Contributor
             mc.default.Docente=Owner

         -You can achieve some section aware configuration for students
    by removing permissions for the role and then granting permission
    for the specific section but you wont be able to do that for
    instructors/tas.

    CHAT

    -No section aware at all.

    ROSTER (SECTION AWARE)

    -Fully section aware. You configure permission in the group realm
    instead of the site realm

    SAMIGO (SECTION AWARE)

    -If a instructor or TA adds a quiz, it will allow him to add it to
    any section, whether is a member of that section or not.

    -A student will only see the quizzes of his section.

    -Question Pools belong to specific users, they can share with others.

    GRADEBOOK

    -Not too sure, we are using Gradebook 2 and is not too good in terms
    of section awareness, specially for students. You can configure
    permissions so that a TA will only be able to grade students from
    his sections. The problem is that the TA will see all gradebook
    items, even the ones that he did not create or the ones that were
    intended for a different section. Same happens to students. Not to
    mention how the final grade is calculated, if you want to use
    weighted categories and you have two sections trying to manage their
    own gradebook items, it can lead to real chaos.

    Addition info about SECTION AWARENESS

    -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKC3i7D5U-k

    -https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Permission+Descriptions+%282.7%29

El 28/10/2014 19:35, nadine blanchette escribió:
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> We are testing different permission configurations in our environment 
> and I have some questions.
>
> Let's say one class is offered, and there will be 4 different sections.
>
> We have one coordinator who supervise, and 2 professors teaching 2 
> sections each.
>
> I want for the professors to be able to create items for the sections 
> they supervise but not for the whole site.
>
> So in the calendar, I removed the "Create events" permission on the 
> site level for the instructor.
>
> But give the permission at the section levels:
>
> However, the professor still have the ability to create events for the 
> whole site, but at least, the groups option is selected by default.
>
> With the announcement tool, that option was removed if the user did 
> not have permission to create for the whole site, so this works fine.
>
> In the assignment tool, however, the possibility to submit to the site 
> is removed, but apparently still selected by default. If the user 
> forget to select the "Groups" option, the assignment is created 
> without warning and assigned to the whole site. Since he doesn't have 
> right at the site level, he can't modify it anymore.
>
> Furthermore, the possibility to indicate that the assignment is for a 
> group is gone.
>
> Also, I thought that since the teachers were assigned to sections, 
> even if they selected "Site", it would only be send to the section for 
> which they have rights,  but it doesn't seem to be the case.
>
> What is the standard behavior?
>
> Any advice on how to set-up our permissions for the situation describe 
> above?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -- 
>
> HEC <http://www.hec.ca/>
>
> 	
>
> *Nadine Blanchette*
>
> *Analyste fonctionnelle*
>
> Gestion des Technologies de l'information
>
> hecca <http://www.hec.ca/>
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-- 
******************************************
José Mariano Luján González - Aula Virtual
Area de Tecnologías de la Información
y las Comunicaciones Aplicadas (ATICA)
UNIVERSIDAD DE MURCIA - http://www.um.es

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