[sakai2-tcc] [Building Sakai] Assignments 2

[Neal Caidin]

TCC and I have been talking about a Tools survey, but this is not firmed up yet,. This might be one approach that could be useful. Not sure where such a list of Assignment 2 tool institutions exist either. Open to suggestions for data gathering.


Neal Caidin

Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
Skype: nealkdin
AIM: ncaidin at aol.com





On Mar 6, 2013, at 1:06 PM, "Kusnetz, Jeremy" <JKusnetz at APUS.EDU> wrote:

> Is there a list of institutions using the Assignment2 tool? Would that help to know how much activity and support would be required?
> 
> We are in the process of moving away from the Assignment1 tool to Assignment2.  From a support perspective I've found the Assignment2 tool to be vastly easier to support than Assignment1.  Primary because of all the data being stored in a relational database and not in XML.  It's also much easier to deal situations where assignments with submissions that were accidentally deleted.   We also like the fact that it connects directly to the gradebook and doesn't keep grades and feedback in two places.  Personally I wish every tool that connected to the gradebook would actually just use the gradebook and not store grades and feedback separately.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Neal Caidin
> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 12:58 PM
> To: May, Megan Marie
> Cc: sakai2-tcc Committee; dev sakai
> Subject: Re: [sakai2-tcc] [Building Sakai] Assignments 2
> 
> That's a shame. It sounds like there was momentum from the last conference but it did not get sheparded through to make it happen.
> 
> I'm not sure what next steps make sense, but as they emerge, I am happy to help with the coordination/communication/sheparding aspect of things.
> 
> It also sounds like the sooner the momentum can be recaptured, the better. If I come up with any brilliant ideas, I'll let you know. None at the moment. My inclination would be to build upon the decision that was made by the large group at the last conference rather than revisiting the decision, as a general rule of thumb on group agreements. But at this point it sounds like there may have been a momentum swing back to Assignments 1. I haven't done enough of an analysis myself to have an opinion either way, other than the obvious, we should pick one.
> 
> I can relate to the *sigh*.
> 
> -- Neal
> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 6, 2013, at 12:04 PM, "May, Megan Marie" <mmmay at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
>> *sigh*    I think Matt raised an excellent discussion topic.  There was 1 thing that was very clear at last year's BOF at the conference.    People thought it was a waste of resources that there were two assignments tools and the sentiment of that very large group was that Assignments2 should be where the community goes.  
>> 
>> I'm troubled by some of your assertions below:  
>> 
>> (a)  The issue is that community has a resource issue.  There are minimal resources working on the CLE as it is and a lot of the work is institutionally driven.    Let's not make developers into villains because they can't be everything to everyone all the time. 
>> (b)  I'd argue this is an issue of the past.  IU implemented A2 alongside A1 and there was a utility written that imported the assignments from A1 to A2.  I'd also argue that Profile2 also did a good job of this.   This seems to be a lesson the community has learned from.   
>> (c)  I think that this is an unfair representation of what could happen.  There are a lot of other scenarios that could be painted - these happen to be very negative ones. 
>> (d)  This concern is in the way these 'replacements' were approached in the past.   Looking at Profile 2 I think we've gotten better. 
>> 
>> While things in the past haven't always gone smoothly, I like to think that community has started to evolve.  Let's not be afraid of new tools because we're scared of past mistakes.     
>> 
>> Megan
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Charles Severance
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 8:32 AM
>> To: dev sakai
>> Cc: sakai2-tcc Committee
>> Subject: [Building Sakai] Assignments 2
>> 
>> Matt,
>> 
>> I strongly disagree with the notion that we should replace Assignments with Assignments 2.  Every time in the past we have gone from X to X2 it has been a painful experience for several reasons:
>> 
>> (a) The school that purports to be behind X2 turns out to be less committed to supporting the communities needs than the school supporting X1 once issues are raised with X2.  They are willing to fix things their local users find in the product but generally never have resources to fix problems other schools find.
>> 
>> (b) We never get a real conversion - a few schools either hack up a conversion or decide to abandon the old data - this might be fine for a few adopters making local tradeoffs  - but unacceptable for code in trunk for all 300 adopters
>> 
>> (c) There is never feature parity - ever.   The few schools using X2 like the additional features and so they turn a blind eye towards what is missing and are not motivated to reach feature parity once they have switched and told their users "too bad" regarding missing functionality.   The schools using X2 are happy to compromise because for some reason they prefer the new.
>> 
>> (d) Given that X2 is in a few places things like performance or scaling issues are seldom identified until we we drop X2 in trunk and folks upgrade and wake up with a surprised look on their face the first week of the semester when it all goes pear-shaped.   At that moment, the "fans" of X2 seem to vanish and are unwilling to fix the problems that crop up.
>> 
>> Believe me, if we set our minds to it, we could fix the state-related problems in Assignments 1 in a few weeks as long as folks were wiling to do a complete and thorough QA / regression test of the code.   We would have multi-tab capabilities - and eliminate these ghostly bugs that come from weird click patterns.   And it would take a month.   If we went to A2, it would take at least a year before the pain was over.  And smart schools would delay upgrade to our next release, waiting for the brave few to work out the kinks of A2.  It is like a poison pill for our next release when we are trying very hard to get more schools close to the current release and make it easier to keep up with latest releases.
>> 
>> If we don't have the resources / energy to QA state-rlated changes to A1 - then we absolutely do not have the resources to bring the A2 code to the level of A1 and build a seamless transition.
>> 
>> Those who like Assignments 2 can run it - lets not regress trunk.  Lets not make things much worse because we are afraid to fix a bug.  If we break core functionality - it is one way to force resources to be invested - but it is a bad way to do it.
>> 
>> /Chuck
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