CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2018/E1860 Improvements to staggered deadline

Introduction

Staggered Deadline Assignment is an assignment which can have different topics listed under it and each of these topics have their independent submission and review deadline. Topic's deadline can be the same as parent assignment or independent to it . Such assignments are useful when the class material is more sequential and instructor wants students to complete assignment as and when a topic gets covered in the class. For example it wouldn't make sense to write a paper on a topic from Chapter 4, until the class had covered Chapter 4.

Problem Statement

Issue 1: Staggered-deadline topic available for selection past its deadline

Issue 1: Staggered-deadline topic available for selection past its deadline

This issue occurs when a Topic is created with multiple slots. If the topic is not selected for the first round of topics(assignment) or all the slots did not get filled up, It is still available for selection in the subsequent rounds. If a team selects the topic in a later round, they are not able to submit their work as the submission deadline is already over. If the topic had only one slot which remained unselected, instructor can change the deadline for that topic to match the new deadlines, but for topics with multiple slots, if the deadline is extended, the teams who worked on this topic in the previous round can submit/review the topic again. This should not happen

Issue 2: Manual submission and review deadline entry required for all topics

When creating a topic an instructor is required to enter review and submission deadlines for all the topics. To reduce the manual we want to allow the instructor to apply one deadline entry to a set of topics and also let the system calculate subsequent dates for subsequent project phases like review and re-submission, based on an initial deadline entry. Instructor should also have the ability to edit each of those deadlines independently incase he wants to change a particular deadline of a topic.

Issue 3: New submissions not identifiable among pool of already graded entries

There is no way to identify new submissions or reviews are new since grading was last done. The Submissions and Reviews should appear in different color before and after they are graded. The color scheme should be compatible with the one used for review report. ie Red indicates incomplete Reviews, Blue indicates reviews that have not been graded and Brown for reviews that have grade assigned to them

Description of Project

The project numbered E1708 and titled ‘Improvements to Staggered-Deadline Assignments’ is intended to make contributors or students understand the implementation of assignments and due dates models and tables, so that they can improve on the methodology which is used to assign the due dates to assignments and topics. A staggered-deadline assignment is an assignment in which different topics have different deadlines. It can be pretty useful if different topics within an assignment can have different deadlines for submission as well as reviews. The project has been divided into three problem statements and each of them is addressing an individual functional requirement related to the staggered deadline. The statements and the proposed approaches to meet the requirements are explained below as implementation.

Project Requirements

The following issues can arise with a staggered-deadline assignment.

Problem 1: Staggered-deadline topic available for selection past its deadline

For a topic with multiple slots that is posted, if it is not selected in the first round, it is still available for selection in a later round. The team that selects the topic then is unable to submit their work as it is past deadline. A solution to this is to prohibit anyone from signing up for a topic whose submission deadline has passed.

Problem 2: Manual submission and review deadline entry required for all topics

Currently system requires instructor to enter submission and review deadlines for all topics. A probable solution to this is to allow the instructor to apply one deadline entry to a set of topics and also let the system calculate subsequent dates for subsequent project phases like review and re-submission, based on an initial deadline entry.

Problem 3: New submissions not identifiable among pool of already graded entries

Currently there is no way to identify new submissions among list of entries for which grading has already been done. There should some marker or way to distinguish new entries.