Right now the gradebook module (including og_gradebook) does not provide a student roster. Students and teachers are designated by role, and all members of the role show up in all gradebooks. With og_gradebook, all group members are treated as students, and the group manager is assigned the role of teacher. I would like to have gradebook_roster submodule that gave more control to the teacher. Here is what I propose:

Develop a roster form with editable fields of Name (textfield) and Role (select with options of Teacher, Student, Course Assistant, ...), and a checkbox to exclude a user from the gradebook. For the name, it would be nice to have an option to take the name from the Users Profile, if it exists. The form would also show the user account name for reference, but this can not be changed. All of these values would be stored in a new gradebook_roster table.

The form would initially be populated by students and teachers provided by gradebookapi (or og_gradebook) via hook_gradebookapi_students or hook_gradebookapi_teachers, and would implement this hook to modify the list of students and teachers.

Instead of the account name, the student's name from the roster would be listed in the gradebook pages. And only students who are not excluded would show up (and have access to) the gradebook.

The roster should also properly handle multiple sections of the same course, though I am not sure how to do this right now. Suggestions?

I do think it will be helpful to allow the formation of a new gradebook by merging rosters from two or more gradebooks, for example in courses with multiple sections.

Any thoughts or suggestions on the gradebook_roster submodule would be appreciated!

Comments

jdwfly’s picture

jdwfly commented

At first I couldn't really tell what extra functionality you intended to provide, but after reading it a couple of times I realize that this would allow some fine tuning of the gradebooks. I do have a few questions though:

1. What do you mean by different sections of the course? Are you talking about 1st Nine weeks, 2nd nine weeks, etc. (1st semester, 2nd semester, etc.)?
2. How do you plan on integrating with the User Profile? The default profile or some other module.
3. I am using the students name for their username so it shows up nice in my gradebook, but it sounds like this would allow them to choose their own username and still show up with their name in the gradebook.

Personally og_gradebook gives me all the functionality that I need. I only have me as the teacher, and students. I don't need to exclude anyone from the gradebook either. These options are definitely needed, but there will be some that won't need them.

MGN’s picture

MGN commented

Madflute brought this up in the education group discussion of gradebook. A single teacher might teach the same course but with different groups of students (1st period, 2nd period, ..., or Section A meets at 9:00, Section B meets at 11:00, ... ). If you use multiple gradebooks for this, then you have to duplicate (clone) assignment nodes. That is always a possibility, but with gradebook roster, you could have one gradebook, divided into multiple sections. This would also allow the teacher to compare the grades in the two sections if different teaching methods were being used, or group them together to get an entire class average.

I hadn't thought of sequential sections like you describe - I guess I was expecting those would just be separate classes, but perhaps something more is needed for that case?

Also, when the students are allowed to choose their own username, it can be difficult to tell who everyone is, looking at the gradebook page. Allowing the teacher to either use the profile name or add a name in place of the user name would help.

As for how to integrate with the user profile, my first thought was to add a select field on the gradebook roster form, that allows the teacher to choose any of the user's defined profile field for the name. I don't want to dictate a required profile field, so I think choosing from any defined field would be sufficient (The administrator could decide whether or not hidden profile fields could also be selected). For example, it might be that the user profile has first name, last name, and student ID# as profile fields. The teacher would select any of these fields (on a per user basis), or simply type in the name (perhaps a nickname) that should be associated with username.

Excluding a student from the gradebook would mostly be beneficial when no using og_gradebook, since all students show up in all gradebooks. With og_gradebook, it might be helpful if a student has dropped the class, but is still being kept as a group member for one reason or another.

I agree that in many cases these features would not be needed - it just makes it a little more flexible, and would be appropriate as an optional extension.

jdwfly’s picture

jdwfly commented

Now I understand what you mean by sections. Yes, that would be very helpful. Currently I am only teaching one class but I am pretty sure next year it will be two, but the exact same material. Duplicating nodes and so forth would be hassle, but being able to integrate several gradebooks with one class would be beneficial. It would almost be like creating sub-groups inside of the group (if one is using og_gradebook). They are all part of the group and therefore receive the same assignments, but they are also on a separate gradebook because their class meets at a different time. Of course there would be times when you might assign something to one class and not to the other. That case will need to be taken care of as well.

I guess I was thinking about how everything works together. In my school we have 4 periods of nine weeks. At the end of each of those report cards are issued (and progress reports are issued in the middle). Then the grades would be closed for that period and a Final grade would be issued. Is there a way this could be implemented? I have some thoughts about this, but I am going to use a hour or so tonight to organize them.

gcaudle’s picture

gcaudle commented

I'm enjoying working with the gradebook module and the roster submodule. One "feature" that is causing some headaches in the application of this module in a multi-teacher school environment is the roster being automatically filled when a gradebook is created. When you are looking at 400+ students, it seems to me that it would be easier to individually create a roster for each gradebook than it is to remove the 370+ names from the roster when it automatically fills in the name of every active student and teacher account. Is there a way to turn off the mechanism that automatically fills the roster?

AntiNSA’s picture

AntiNSA commented

I havent got a chance to look at this feature yet, but just a quick glance shows me that the roster only displays the student members of each organic group seperatly.. I havent tested yet multiple teachers yet....

But are you not using organic groups? I would suggest using organic groups,,,,,

MGN’s picture

MGN commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Closing this because the module is now available.