CUNY Academic Commons

Thanks Boone. Will follow up with the list soon.

From Amy Wolfe OER developer at Brookyln on Directory info to change...

6 courses and groups which need their “Instructor” fields to be updated.

They currently are associated with “Brooklyn College-OER Developer-Amy Wolfe Account”

They need to be changed and Professor Dan Shtob, who is already listed as the sites main administrator, needs to be listed as the Instructor.

Dan Shtob Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Sustainability http://cuny.is/danshtob [cuny.is]

• Group: SOCY 2112 (Private Group)
• Site: SOCY 2112: Research Methods II (Public Site)

• Group: SUST 1001 Introduction to Urban Sustainability (Private Group)

• Site: SUST 1001 Introduction to Urban Sustainability (Public Site)

• Group: SUST 2001W Urban Sustainability Theory (Private Group)
• Site: SUST 2001W Urban Sustainability Theory (Public Site)

• Group: SOCY 2201 (Shtob) (Private Group)
• Site: Sociology of the Environment (Public Site)

• Group: SOCY 3202 (Shtob) (Private Group)
• Site: Race, Class, and Environmental Justice (Public Site)

Amy also asked:

Going forward what procedure should we follow to ensure a course’s instructor field is populated by the Instructor name and not the technologists? Brooklyn College has increased the use of the Academic Commons as an OER platform and at Brooklyn College most OER are created by the technologists and not the faculty members so this could be an ongoing issue.

I advised that having the faculty member make their own site or group would resolve this issue, or having the faculty member go through the process with the OER developer but making sure they are logged into the faculty member's account would best.

How difficult would it be to add a primary instructor field to the creation process? I can see this causing confusion but it would both avoid this issue and allow directory changes on the front end of the commons. I let Amy know that I am not sure we can make this change, but I wanted to be sure to ask.

thanks for helping to make these changes Boone.

Laurie

Summing up our conversation about this during today's dev call, we decided it would be good to have a backend way to change or assign an instructor (or potentially multiple instructors), but that this wouldn't be required or integrated as part of the course site creation flow.

It can be important for non-teachers to be admins of a course site for extended periods. An OER developer, for example, may assist a teacher with admin-only tasks over several semesters, or that developer may want to clone that site as an admin later. So we can't tie admins to the Instructor display directly, or we'd surface these non-teacher admins.

If we go with the backend management option, OER developers and other power Commons users who'd be aware and capable of using that option would be better able to handle these edge-case but important management/creation projects, and the normal flow of users/creators wouldn't be bothered or confused by it. The majority of new course sites will show as an instructor the person who created it by default, and that will be ok.

Related questions -- If I assign a Commons user as an Instructor for a course site, do they necessarily need to be an admin of that site? Or will the two be separate. And if I assign a user, and then for some reason that user account is deleted (or removed from Admin status), will that Instructor field just be blank?

Thank you Boone for making these updates, and Colin for documenting the follow up conversation.

OER developers and other power Commons users who'd be aware and capable of using that option would be better able to handle these edge-case but important management/creation projects, and the normal flow of users/creators wouldn't be bothered or confused by it. The majority of new course sites will show as an instructor the person who created it by default, and that will be ok.

I like the idea of a back end management option as a middle ground for active management but not adding confusion during the site/group creation process.

If I assign a Commons user as an Instructor for a course site, do they necessarily need to be an admin of that site? Or will the two be separate.

I do think it would be better if the assigned instructor had to be a user on the site to avoid confusion and/or someone getting assigned instructor incorrectly.

And if I assign a user, and then for some reason that user account is deleted (or removed from Admin status), will that Instructor field just be blank?

I think this would be okay? Or another admin could be listed instead?

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what would be an example of one of those cases where a user would be listed as instructor who isn't one? If we set it up so the instructor is editable, couldn't an OER developer (or any other non-instructor) make sure they aren't listed there, and that only instructor(s) are?

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what would be an example of one of those cases where a user would be listed as instructor who isn't one?

The example is: An OER developer is a site Administrator, but is not an instructor.

If we set it up so the instructor is editable, couldn't an OER developer (or any other non-instructor) make sure they aren't listed there, and that only instructor(s) are?

Yes, that's what I'm proposing in #14096.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my comment in #9. I was responding to your comment in #7 that "we can't tie admins to the Instructor display directly". What I meant was that we currently have a sub-optimal setup, where OER developers are sometimes listed as the sole instructor for Courses. If we changed it so that the admin-instructor list is synced, then we have another sub-optimal setup, where OER developers are sometimes listed as a supplemental instructor for Courses. IMHO the second situation is more acceptable than the first, and we could reasonably decide as a team that it's good enough, if we didn't want to invest in #14096.

Thanks Boone, that all makes sense, and I think we're far enough along that #14096 would be a good investment providing that you and Jeremy don't hit big snags there putting it together. That ticket's looking good to me so far.

Thanks Boone and Colin for figuring this out. I think the ability to set instructor manually will be helpful, esp. in cases with OER developers helping out faculty. The #14096 ticket for this looks great.