CUNY Academic Commons

Hi Boone,

Thanks for organizing the tickets.

The WP Grade plugins adds the "Grade" column (screenshot 3). I believe the comment bubble is standard wordpress but when you view the comments, you can see that there are private comments, and the grade column is added in the comments view, too.

I think the simplest integration would entail having (information generated by) this grade column appear in the reckoning user summary overview (screenshot 1) connected to the post on which the grade was posted. Similar to how the posts dashboard has several columns, I am suggestion the reckoning user summary overview also might have several columns, such as post title and date posted (current) plus post category (ticket #11939) and grade. I know in the post dashboard the columns are dynamic, but I don't think they need to be in reckoning beyond having a link to the post (current functionality).

If we could add more dynamic functionality to the reckoning user summary overview, I would suggest adding the comment bubble so that an admin could see how many comments were on the students post and easily navigate to their own feedback (or see that they missed a comment) from the reckoning overview screen.

What did I miss? Thoughts?

Hi Boone,

In several recent workshops faculty have been asking about ability to assign formative feedback/grade to posts, and then download this info to integrate into external grading platform (like excel).

I wanted to revisit #3 from the original post

3. Explore potential for creating functional connection between WP Grade Comments and Reckoning. The most useful connection might be whether reckoning can pull the "grade" attached to each post and display in the user summary. This mechanism might exist in some form through WP Grade comments plugin already because when you view the post list in the dashboard, the grade is also displayed (Screenshot attached). Would it be possible to use that functionality in reckoning to have grades appear with the posts in the user summary?

Could we consider developing a a way to pull in WP grade Comment comments and grades into reckoning and also allow for this to be downloaded as part of the CSV data?

Yes, I think we can consider this. The challenge here is that comments and posts are collated separately. Grades, as posted via WP Grade Comments, are associated with individual comments, where presumably (correct me if I'm wrong) you would want the grades exported with the posts. This logic obviously isn't too complicated - when pulling up a list of posts, check the comments belonging to each, and if one has a grade, then include it with that post - but it could cause issues in the (rare but technically possible) case where a post has more than one comment with a grade.

Anyway, given this technical background, can you give an overview of how and where you think that grade data should be included in the display and CSV export?

Thanks, Laurie, for the very helpful feedback.

I'll take a look in the upcoming weeks and see what I can figure out. This may be something we can pull into the 1.20 release.

Boone, just a FYI that the CSV code for Reckoning is located at /mu-plugins/assets/admin/reckoning.php.

Thank you sir!

Thanks for the quick feedback, Laurie.

I've changed the logic of the plugin so that newer comments are preferred over older ones. https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/52bf4a2290b0fa575c54f6002c1f64a3a98c0337

- Could we make it possible to add a grade without having to add a comment? Currently when I try to add a grade without a comment a modal appears asking me to make a comment in order to submit (screenshot attached). I realize it might be impossible to separate the grade submission from required comment but I figured I would ask.

Yes, I recently added this to the plugin for the City Tech OpenLab, but hadn't yet released it. I've done so and update the Commons in https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/03b5313de392fa600ed7ef5d72bde0268f7852b0. Be sure you do a hard-refresh in order to load the new JavaScript when testing.

Thanks for these updates Boone. I can see now that newer grades replace older ones, and I can add a grade without entering a full comment.

One more question - would it be possible to somehow designate which comments were entered as private. Either through another column (Private Comment? with a check mark) or through some alternative organization? I don't have preferences about display here, but i think it would be helpful to be able to view private vs. pubic comments in this area.

I've added a 'Private?' column to the Comments column in the web view ('private' is a property of comments, not of posts, in the wp-grade-comments context) and also a 'Private?' column in the CSV export. The CSV export combines posts and comments into a single set of headers, so there may be some confusion when there's a 'Private' column next to post rows. But I'll leave it up to your testing to decide whether we can or should do anything about it. https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/29cae48275046dd3a6841bf6b5209e725a434a71

If anyone would like to test this WP Grade Comment & Reckoning integration some steps below.

I guess try to imagine you are an instructor who is using posts, comments, private comments, "grades", as the assignment turn in and feedback mechanism in your course.

I did a workshop yesterday on ungrading and shared how these features can be used in feedback and ungrading practices. I am wondering if down the road we might considering changing the word "grade" to something equally as descriptive since the commons seeks to foster alternative forms of assessment.

I don't have any good ideas and I don't want to complicate this more than necessary (and its in the plugin name so... we can leave it as is for now). But I wanted to raise this idea, and offer it something else to think about as you test these features.

1. Make a test post, categorize it.

2. Comment on the post

3. Private Comment on the post and add a grade. Visit reckoning backend (User summary)
- Does your post and comments appear in reckoning back end?
- Is the reckoning UI clear? Does it make sense that some posts have comments, private comments, grades?

4. Go back to post and add new grade without submitting text comment
- Check reckoning, has the grade on the post been updated to reflect the most recent grade?

5. Download the csv and open on your local machine.
- Is the CSV clear? Does the layout and columns make sense?

If I am missing any steps, feel free to add.

Thanks, Laurie. I've made the requested changes.

Here are a few small things, I think really for Laurie as this continues to be refined, that I thought I'd mention from going through her testing steps:

- From what I gather, the purpose here is to be able to grade someone's Wordpress post, because you can only have one grade on a post in the backend. So is there a point to the step 2 comment, the public one, other than comparing to the private/graded one that actually gets pulled into Reckoning?

- It was hard at first to figure out that I needed to go to Dashboard > Users > User Summary to see the right Reckoning screen, but I'm sure walkthroughs/documentation can help with that.

- Is it better to change a grade by editing the initial graded/private comment, or by creating a new one? Or maybe it's no difference. I assume the newest private/graded comment supersedes and is what Reckoning attaches/exports/etc for that particular post.

- The CSV is clear, and I guess just requires some specific sorting to isolate the grades that apply to each individual student, especially if there are multiple posts by multiple students? Since there are separate rows for posts and comments, you have to sort by post title then by type, perhaps? Or is it better to use the user (i.e. student) display name?

Hi Colin,

Thanks for this feedback. I tried to clarify the use of these plugins and answer your questions in the documentation which can be viewed here: https://help.commons.gc.cuny.edu/student-assessment-2/

- From what I gather, the purpose here is to be able to grade someone's Wordpress post, because you can only have one grade on a post in the backend. So is there a point to the step 2 comment, the public one, other than comparing to the private/graded one that actually gets pulled into Reckoning?

I am a bit confused but i think you mean the public comment option? This is standard and we will leave as is. If someone isn't posting a private comment, they may be posting a public comment, possibly to foster discussion, or provide public feedback.

- It was hard at first to figure out that I needed to go to Dashboard > Users > User Summary to see the right Reckoning screen, but I'm sure walkthroughs/documentation can help with that.

I tried to make this clear in documentation.

- Is it better to change a grade by editing the initial graded/private comment, or by creating a new one? Or maybe it's no difference. I assume the newest private/graded comment supersedes and is what Reckoning attaches/exports/etc for that particular post.

Grades can only be changed by visiting the post and entering a second grade- only the most recent grade appears in reckoning. We may want to test that only admins can submit grades and add private comments...

- The CSV is clear, and I guess just requires some specific sorting to isolate the grades that apply to each individual student, especially if there are multiple posts by multiple students? Since there are separate rows for posts and comments, you have to sort by post title then by type, perhaps? Or is it better to use the user (i.e. student) display name?

Yes, you would sort by username. I added this info to documentation too.

Thanks, Laurie. I didn't think that the regular commenting feature had any connection to Reckoning, and was inartfully trying to talk through that. I think we're all set here.