Hi,
Ruslan Kabalin has updated the old Assignment (2.2) subtype for Mahara to a new Assignment (2.3+) submission plugin (assignsubmission_mahara). I'm just taking over the plugin from him to finish it off now and pondering how best to handle page locking.
The way that this plugin works, when a user submits their Page (formerly View) to Moodle, that page must be locked in Mahara to prevent any further changes to the Page prior to (or during) marking. There are two options for how we can do this, and I'd appreciate some feedback on how users would expect this to work. In writing this up, I'm already rubber-ducking and making my mind up, but I'd appreciate some user feedback too.
One way would be to Lock the Mahara Page as soon as it is submitted to Moodle. The Page is released when a different Mahara page is selected and the assignment resubmitted. We could also theoretically allow the user to release the Page in the Moodle submission screen by some other mechanism to allow them to make changes to that Page before the submission date (unsubmitting their work essentially).
The other way of handling the page locking would be to only lock the Mahara Page when the assignment submission is locked in Moodle. When an administrator unlocks the assignment submission, the page is unlocked in Mahara. We would prevent any marking of the page until it has been locked in Moodle. Ideally a task would run to lock all pages in Moodle (and thus Mahara) at the submission deadline.
In talking this through, I feel that the first option is the 'best' and most appropriate option, but would appreciate some validation of my thoughts. My feeling is that Locking of assignment submissions in Moodle is the wrong approach to take and is really intended for different purposes.
Additionally, I'm just wondering what should happen to that page once the assignment has been marked. My gut feeling is that it should not be released... ever - imagine the scenario where the Page is used as evidence and sent to an external examiner at a later date. It therefore must not be modified in any way between being marked initially, and then subsequently marked by the external examiner. Again, I'd appreciate any views others may have in this regard.
For those familiar with Mahara, you will of course be aware that even when a Page has been locked, some of it's content can still be changed as it is essentially just a view of other content. As a result, content such as Blog Posts which are displayed within the Page can still be edited, so this is not foolproof.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions,
Andrew Nicols