CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2019 -E1974 Allow users to create an account and submit work to an ”assignment” Design

This page provides a description of the Expertiza based OSS project.

About Expertiza

Expertiza is an open source project based on Ruby on Rails framework. Expertiza allows the instructor to create new assignments and customize new or existing assignments. It also allows the instructor to create a list of topics the students can sign up for. Students can form teams in Expertiza to work on various projects and assignments. Students can also peer review other students' submissions. Expertiza supports submission across various document types, including the URLs and wiki pages.

Problem Statement

Existing Solution

Conference assignments are the type of assignments open for all the people. We can assign participants to assignments they are participating in, and they can submit their work for it. In today's scenario, participants share google doc, authors and co-authors name with instructor. Then instructor has to add those authors and co-authors as users in expertiza, assign them to the particular assignment.

Proposed Solution

This project concentrates on the use of expertiza assignments as conferences/journals. Using these assignments, people can submit their papers and get reviews for the same. The focus of this project will be to enable a particular conference participants to create an expertiza account and teams for conference submission by minimizing the inputs required from the application admin/instructor.

Task to be Accomplished

• Instructor should be able to create new link for Authors to join the Conference Assignments
• Author should be able to create account by clicking on the link. If author doesnt have an account
• Author should be assigned to a newly created team and should be able to create a link for co-authors to join the team.
• Co-Authors on clicking on link should be able to join author's team and should be able to submit work for the assignment.

Sequence Diagram

Design - The Grubby Details

Creating The conference type assignment

Following will be the high level steps the instructor would be performing to create a conference type assignment along with the changes required:

1. Instructor logs in with his credentials.

2. Instructor creates an assignment by checking a new check box - “Is conference-style assignment”, to mark the assignment to be of conference type.

• This checkbox will be introduced in the Assignment’s edit page(app/views/assignments/edit/_general.html)

3. Based on the flag, once the assignment is created, a shareable URL will be displayed on the assignments page that can be used by the Instructor to share among students/authors. They will use this URL to be automatically assigned the given assignment.

• If the student does not have an expertiza account, he/she will be asked to create an account and will not be having a need to get it authorized from the admin as only those people will be able to create an account in expertiza with whom the link is shared.

The usage of the url and it’s working will be discussed in the next part.

Changes for Conference's authors

Following will be the high level steps the Author would be performing to create an account:

1. After instructor has created new assignment and a team for this assignment, instructor will be able to see a URL which will be shared by him with potential authors so that they can use their existing expertiza accounts or create new accounts to add submissions to the assignment. Creation of new account will not require approval from instructor/admin. URL will be visible on page /assignments/{id}/edit .

2. If Author already has an account he will be able to view the conference type assignment and his default team. If Author account does not exists he will be redirect to page /users/request_new?role=Student. On this page author can input all the required details to create author account with role as student. This account will not require any approval from instructor to activation.

3. After Author account is created, the author can add co-authors to this assignments.

4. Author can login in and navigate to assignment -> Your Team and invite co-authors into his team for working on the submission.

5. Adding co-authors has following two cases - either the co-author's expertiza account already exists or a new user will be created otherwise in a similar way in which the author's account is created.

6. Author can provide email id of co-authors in invite list of “Your Team” and will be able to view a shareable URL on page student_teams/view?student_id={id}, which will be shared by author to his team mates to join this team.

7. The role for both Author and Co-author is a student type because the difference in the 'conference type assignment' and a normal assignment is only in the way that users are added to it(i.e., by creating an account for themselves if they don't already have an account).

Changes for Conference's co-authors

1. When a co-author click on the URL shared by author to join his team

• If co-author already has an account, he will be asked to login and will be able to view his team and assignment.
• If co-author does not exist, he will be redirected to page /users/request_new?role=Student. On this page all the details required to create a new user will be entered and a student account will be created which will not require approval from instructor for account activation.

2. Co-author's email will be verified while creating student account to validate if co-author is same person which author intended to add on his team. This will prevent spam/fake users from joining the author's team.

Database Changes

As part of this project, the change in the database would be addition of a new column: 'is_conference_type_assignment' in 'Assignment' table with default value 0, and value = 1 if the assignment is of 'conference' type.

Files to be changed

Test Plan

Please find the below plan to test the functionality

RSpec Tests

Please find below RSpec Test cases for this feature

Scenario 1: Creating student type user from controller by bypassing admin approval

After instructor creates a conference type assignment, author should be able to create an account and this account doesn't require approval from admin.

Files associated with this functionality:

1. users_controller_spec.rb

Following tests will be performed to verify whether the functionality is working as desired.

• Test case to check if author is able to to create and login into a new account without admin approval

Scenario 2: Author/Co-author after creating an account is able to access conference type assignment

After Author has created an account, he/she should be able to access the conference type account.

Files associated with this functionality:

1. users_controller_spec.rb

Following tests will be performed to verify whether the functionality is working as desired.

• Test case to check if Author is assigned to conference type assignment and able to access it
• Test case to check if Co-author is assigned to conference type assignment and able to access it
• Test case to check if Author has been added to default team
• Test case to check if Co-author is added to Author's team

Scenario 3: Conference type assignment being created

Instructor should be able to create conference type assignment

Files associated with this functionality:

1. users_controller_spec.rb

Following tests will be performed to verify whether the functionality is working as desired.

• Test case to check if Conference type assignment has been created

Scenario 4: Author/Co-author should be able to see assignment if they already have an account

After Instructor creates a conference type assignment, Author/Co-author clicks on link provided to them. If they already have an account, they should see conference type assignment in their assignment page

Files associated with this functionality:

1. users_controller_spec.rb

Following tests will be performed to verify whether the functionality is working as desired.

• Test case to check if Author/Co-author already have an account
• Test case to validate if Author/Co-author can see assignment in their assignment page if they already have an account

Teammates

Mentor - Prof. Edward Gehringer

• Sameer Adhikari (sadhika2)
• Gurman Singh (gsingh23)
• Garima Garima (ggarima)
• Bharat Bhardwaj (bbhardw)

References

1. Github Repository for Expertiza
2. Expertiza Documentation on Database Tables
3. Rails Guide Documentation