CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2017/E1748 Add past-due assignments to task list

About Expertiza

Expertiza is an open source project. It is based on Ruby on Rails framework. The expertiza project is supported by National Science Foundation. Expertiza is a web application which allows instructors to create new assignments, list of topics which students can sign up for. It allows students to submit and peer-review learning object like articles, code, web sites etc. Students can also form teams for various assignments and projects. It is used in select courses by professors at NC State and various other universities.

Problem Statement

The following tasks were required to be completed in this project:

• Issue #80: Add past-due assignments to task list.
• Highlight with specific colors current and next due dates.

Current Implementation

Functionality

• Past Due assignments are not present in the task list.

The assignments which student is a part of but they have not been submitted and are past the deadline are not present in the task list of the user. Currently only those tasks which are not yet started are added in the task list.

• Next due date.

Currently it is difficult to distinguish between the assignments which have the next immediate due date.

Drawbacks and solutions

• Problem1: If a student has an assignment which he has not submitted and the deadline has passed it does not show in his task list.

New Implementation

• The function overdue_tasks? is added in the model student_task.rb file to fetch those tasks with current stage set as finished and which were not started by the student.

   def overdue_task?
       current_stage == 'Finished' && !started?
   end

• In the list.html.erb file we used the tasks not started section as a template to construct the past due assignments section.

      <%= @pastdueassignments.size.to_s %> Past Due Assignments


   <% @pastdueassignments.each do |student_task|
         participant = student_task.participant
         stage = student_task.current_stage
         topic_id = SignedUpTeam.topic_id(participant.parent_id, participant.user_id)
         duedate = participant.assignment.stage_deadline(topic_id)
         %>
             »
             <%= student_task.assignment.name + " " + student_task.current_stage %>
             (<%= student_task.relative_deadline %> Past Deadline )
           

 <% end %>

• The past due assignments variable from the controller contains the list of past due assignments as its contents which are looped through with a do each loop. The participant, stage and topic_id are used to obtain the due date of the assignment. Then the assignment name and its deadline are displayed.