Great idea!
-- Art
<Hobby Horse>
Mmm, the submission "process" is the one area which I think should be kept as clean as possible. We have awful hassles with Blackboard in this very area. There it's called the Drop Box and students have two options - save and send to upload their submissions. Sounds easy as "save" uploads the file into the Student's drop box, and "send" uploads the file to the Teacher's drop box. Of course, the subtle difference is understandably lost on many students which means lots of work which was "submitted" never gets to the teacher. It's not a disaster as the work can be fished out of the student's area and sent onto the right place, the teacher's area, but, as I say, it's a tremendous hassle which could be very simply avoided - don't give students their own drop boxes and only have one option. Locally they don't need/use their own private Blackboard areas anyway because they've got Network space.
It's a case of a "good" idea being a nightmare in practise. The designers living and breathing Backboard know there are two areas, teachers after using Blackboard for a year know there are two areas but the poor students who may only submit a few things into Blackboard each term/year can't get their heads round that fact. And why should they? At the end of day it's a bad idea. I would really hate for us to fall into the same trap...
I suspect a "student area" completely divorced from the submission process would be a much safer way to go. Weren't we going to have one of those with DMS, or son of DMS, or something?
</Hobby Horse>
Ray
Mmm, the submission "process" is the one area which I think should be kept as clean as possible. We have awful hassles with Blackboard in this very area. There it's called the Drop Box and students have two options - save and send to upload their submissions. Sounds easy as "save" uploads the file into the Student's drop box, and "send" uploads the file to the Teacher's drop box. Of course, the subtle difference is understandably lost on many students which means lots of work which was "submitted" never gets to the teacher. It's not a disaster as the work can be fished out of the student's area and sent onto the right place, the teacher's area, but, as I say, it's a tremendous hassle which could be very simply avoided - don't give students their own drop boxes and only have one option. Locally they don't need/use their own private Blackboard areas anyway because they've got Network space.
It's a case of a "good" idea being a nightmare in practise. The designers living and breathing Backboard know there are two areas, teachers after using Blackboard for a year know there are two areas but the poor students who may only submit a few things into Blackboard each term/year can't get their heads round that fact. And why should they? At the end of day it's a bad idea. I would really hate for us to fall into the same trap...
I suspect a "student area" completely divorced from the submission process would be a much safer way to go. Weren't we going to have one of those with DMS, or son of DMS, or something?
</Hobby Horse>
Ray
In reply to Ray Kingdon
Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Gustav W Delius -
Now that my suggestion for the "Save" button has been rejected I'll try an alternative which for us would achieve the same thing:
Could we have an option to allow students to change their submissions until the start of assessments?
In reply to Gustav W Delius
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Ray Kingdon -
Ah, now you're talking 
. I think that's relatively easy to do. There is already an option to Edit an submission. The student normally sees it between the submission time and the submission time plus the maxeditingtime. It would be just a matter of changing the condition, probably adding an OR condition testing the $workshop->phase to effect the required change. The place to look is in the function workshop_list_user_submissions in locallib.php.
Are we thinking of this "feature" as an option or as a thing all workshops do? If the latter it means that the Teacher should not be allowed to assess the student submissions until the Students can start assessing (which I suppose is fair enough). (That's just a matter of with-holding the "N Student Submissions for Assessment" (or similiar) link seen by Teachers until phase 3, at the moment it's seen in Phase 2.)
Ray
. I think that's relatively easy to do. There is already an option to Edit an submission. The student normally sees it between the submission time and the submission time plus the maxeditingtime. It would be just a matter of changing the condition, probably adding an OR condition testing the $workshop->phase to effect the required change. The place to look is in the function workshop_list_user_submissions in locallib.php.Are we thinking of this "feature" as an option or as a thing all workshops do? If the latter it means that the Teacher should not be allowed to assess the student submissions until the Students can start assessing (which I suppose is fair enough). (That's just a matter of with-holding the "N Student Submissions for Assessment" (or similiar) link seen by Teachers until phase 3, at the moment it's seen in Phase 2.)
Ray
In reply to Ray Kingdon
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Gustav W Delius -
Personally I wouldn't have any problem with making the teacher wait until after the deadline before assessing student's work. That would keep it simple.
In reply to Gustav W Delius
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Ray Kingdon -
I don't either. I'll go ahead and make that change...
Ray
Ray
In reply to Ray Kingdon
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Ray Kingdon -
OK, that's there in CVS. It obviously only applies to Workshops with separate Submission|Submission+Assessment|Assessment phases. Students should now be able to continue making changes to their submission during the Submission phase. And teachers can only start assessing them in the Submission+Assessment phase and beyond. The simpler three phase workshops should act as before (a submission has only a finite time when it can be changed).
Ray
Ray
In reply to Ray Kingdon
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Gustav W Delius -
Ray, thank you very much for that change. My students appreciate it.
In reply to Gustav W Delius
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Ray Kingdon -
You're welcome. 
I had a litle trouble getting the simpler (3 phase) workshop to perform correctly after I made this change. I think I've fixed that now with the latest changes to CVS.
What needs to be done now is the addition of extra dates so that (a) the students have some warning that they are no longer in "change" mode and their submissions will get frozen and (b) the workshop can change phase automatically. I think there's three dates: the phase 2 -> 3 date, the phase 3 -> 4 date and the phase 4 -> 5 date. But we can't use those names. What labels we give these dates is tricky. If you have any suggestions please share them...
I think "End of Initial Submission period", "End of Submission and Assessment period" and "End of Assessment period" might be OK but they could be improved.
Ray
I had a litle trouble getting the simpler (3 phase) workshop to perform correctly after I made this change. I think I've fixed that now with the latest changes to CVS.
What needs to be done now is the addition of extra dates so that (a) the students have some warning that they are no longer in "change" mode and their submissions will get frozen and (b) the workshop can change phase automatically. I think there's three dates: the phase 2 -> 3 date, the phase 3 -> 4 date and the phase 4 -> 5 date. But we can't use those names. What labels we give these dates is tricky. If you have any suggestions please share them...
I think "End of Initial Submission period", "End of Submission and Assessment period" and "End of Assessment period" might be OK but they could be improved.
Ray
In reply to Ray Kingdon
Re: Allow students to change their submissions until the due date
by Gustav W Delius -
How about "Start of assessment period", "Submission due date", "Assessment due date"?