E1833 Fix and improve rubric criteria

Introduction

Background

Expertiza is an educational web application created and maintained by the joint efforts of the students and the faculty at NCSU. It’s an open source project developed on Ruby on Rails platform and it’s code is available on Github. It provides a dashboard for all the Assignments corresponding to a course and provides absolute control to the Instructors and Teaching Assistant. In addition to Assignments, it encompasses peer reviews where in participants are allowed to provide feedback anonymously about each other's work thereby providing scope for better outcome.

Problem statement

In Expertiza, instructors (also admin, super admin and TAs) can create rubrics (they are called questionnaires in DB, there are different types like review rubric, teammate review rubric, etc. Each rubric may have one or many criteria (called questions in DB). For each criterion, it may have 0 to many suggestions/advices.

Issues to be resolved

Issue 696

Issue Description: Instructors and TA’s under the same instructor can make changes to each other’s rubric.

Expectations

Only the owner (an instructor) and his/her TA(s) should be able to edit the corresponding rubric.

Solution Implemented

The first step towards solving this issue was to retrieve id of current user and check its authorization with regards to questionnaire.To achieve this, we are checking if current user is a 'Teaching Assistant' and his/her 'instructor' has access to current questionnaire. If the instructor has access of questionnaire, his/her Teaching Assistant should also have access to the respective questionnaire.

This is implemented by checking the instructor id of the TA against the question's instructor id. To get the instructor id of a TA, the assign_instructor_id was reused.

Modified Files

• app/controllers/export_file_controller.rb
• app/controllers/questionnaires_controller.rb
• app/models/question.rb

expertiza/apps/controllers/questionnaires_controller.rb

  def action_allowed?
    if params[:action] == "edit"
      @questionnaire = Questionnaire.find(params[:id])
      (['Super-Administrator',
       'Administrator'
       ].include? current_role_name) ||
          ((['Instructor'].include? current_role_name) && current_user_id?(@questionnaire.try(:instructor_id))) ||
          ((['Teaching Assistant'].include? current_role_name) && assign_instructor_id == @questionnaire.try(:instructor_id))

    else
        ['Super-Administrator',
         'Administrator',
         'Instructor',
         'Teaching Assistant', 'Student'].include? current_role_name
   end
 end

expertiza/app/controllers/export_file_controller.rb

  def start
    @model = params[:model]%>
    titles = {"Assignment" => "Grades", "CourseParticipant" => "Course Participants", "AssignmentTeam" => "Teams",
              "CourseTeam" => "Teams", "User" => "Users", "Question" => "Questions"}
    @title = titles[@model] 
    @id = params[:id]
  end 

expertiza/app/models/question.rb

  def self.export_fields(_options)
    fields = ["Seq", "Question", "Type", "Weight", "text area size", "max_label", "min_label"]
    fields
  end

TA 'teaching_assistant520' belongs to 'instructor6' and has access to question '517 F09 wiki'

TA 'teaching_assistant20' belongs 'instructor6' and does not have access to question bilim3

Issue 577

When logged in as super admin. At the bottom of the rubric, we will find links to import it and export it. The Export Details does not work and is not relevant to the context. Export page does not display the names of the rubric. When a rubric is exported, the headers on each column were incorrect and not related to the rubric. It seems to be headers from an export of information on users.

Expectations

Export page needs to give the name of the rubric When a rubric is exported, the column names should be proper. Exporting "details" for rubrics should mean exporting the advice associated with the rubrics. And then could rename "export details" to "export advice". Also change name of columns as per advice information extracted.

Solution Implemented

In order to implement export functionality for questionnaire, two functions were added to question_advice model namely export_field and export. Export_fields returns an array of model fields and Export returns the advice data for current questionnaire. A new route has also been defined to handle the question advice export request. Views were also changed to display “Export Advices” instead of “Export Details” in the case of the Question model. You can find similar export functionalities in other modules as well including question model.

Modified Files

• app/controllers/export_file_controller.rb
• app/views/export_file/start.html.erb
• app/config/routes.rb
• app/models/question_advice.rb

expertiza/app/controllers/export_file_controller.rb

  def export_advices
    @delim_type = params[:delim_type]
    filename, delimiter = find_delim_filename(@delim_type, params[:other_char])

    allowed_models = ['Question']
    advice_model = 'QuestionAdvice'

    csv_data = CSV.generate(col_sep: delimiter) do |csv|
      if allowed_models.include? params[:model]
        csv << Object.const_get(advice_model).export_fields(params[:options])
        Object.const_get(advice_model).export(csv, params[:id], params[:options])
      end
    end

    send_data csv_data,
              type: 'text/csv; charset=iso-8859-1; header=present',
              disposition: "attachment; filename=#{filename}"
  end

expertiza/app/models/question_advice.rb

class QuestionAdvice < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :question

  def self.export_fields(_options)
    fields = []
    QuestionAdvice.columns.each do |column|
      fields.push(column.name)
    end
    fields
  end

  def self.export(csv, parent_id, _options)
    questionnaire = Questionnaire.find(parent_id)
    questions = questionnaire.questions
    questions.each do |question|
      question_advices = QuestionAdvice.where("question_id = ?", question.id)
      question_advices.each do |advice|
        tcsv = []
        advice.attributes.each_pair do |_name, value|
          tcsv.push(value)
        end
        csv << tcsv
      end
    end
  end
end

expertiza/app/views/export_file/start.html.erb

<% if @model == 'Question' %>
  <h2>Export Advices</h2>
  <%= form_tag({:controller => 'export_file', :action => 'export_advices'}, {:method => 'post', :multipart => true, :name => 'export_advices'}) do %>
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td valign='Top'>Delimiter:</td>
        <td>
          <%= radio_button_tag 'delim_type', 'comma', true %> Comma<br/>
          <%= radio_button_tag 'delim_type', 'space' %> Space<br/>
          <%= radio_button_tag 'delim_type', 'tab' %> Tab<br/>
          <%= radio_button_tag 'delim_type', 'other' %> Other <%= text_field_tag 'other_char' %>
          <br/>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <br/>
    <%= hidden_field_tag('model', @model) %>
    <%= hidden_field_tag('id', @id) %>
    <input type='submit' value='Export Advices' onclick='{export_advices.submit();}'/>
    <br/><br/>
  <% end %>

expertiza/app/config/routes.rb

  resources :export_file, only: [] do
    collection do
      get :start
      get :export
      post :export
      post :exportdetails
      post :export_advices
    end
  end

Export Advices Output File

Test Plan

Issue 696

There were no existing test cases for the Questionnaires_controller. We have made changes in questionnaires_controller_spec.rb which covers testing scenarios to check access over questionnaire module as per the role defined in the system i.e. for roles Instructor, TA and admin. The specs were run on the previous and current files and they return the same results implying that the changed code does not break anything. Below are the test Scenarios covered:

• when the role name of current user is super admin or admin.
• when current user is the instructor of current questionnaires.
• when current user is the ta of the course which current questionnaires belongs to.
• when current user is a ta but not the ta of the course which current questionnaires belongs to.
• when current user is the instructor of the course which current questionnaires belongs to.
• when current user is an instructor but not the instructor of current course or current questionnaires.

Issue 577

There was no implementation in place to export question advice associated with questionnaires. We have created a new file question_advice_spec.rb to test question_advice.rb model. Test case is created to test both the methods i.e export_field and export.

Manual Test

Below are the steps to perform manual testing for the issues resolved.

Issue 696: 'Teaching_assistant520' has access to review 'review/517 F09 wiki'

• Step 1: Login as teaching_assistant520/password
• Step 2: Navigate to path manage->Questionnaires-> Review rubric
• Step 3: Select questionnaire named Review from the list, which Teaching Assistant has access to.
• Step 4: Choose question 517 F09 wiki and click on edit question button(pencil symbol).
• Step 5: Teaching Assistant should be able to edit the questionnaire.(If Instructor/Teaching assistant does not have access to current questionnaire, system will show an error message).

Issue 577: 'Teaching_assistant520' and 'Instructor' has access to review 'review/517 F09 wiki'

• Step 1: Login as instructor/password or teaching_assistant520/password
• Step 2: Navigate to path manage->Questionnaires-> Review rubric
• Step 3: Select questionnaire named Review from the list, which Instructor/Teaching Assistant has access to.
• Step 4: Choose question 517 F09 wiki and click on edit question button(pencil symbol).
• Step 5: Click on the link 'Export questionnaire' at the bottom of the page.
• Step 6: Top of the page shows Export Questions. When clicked of export, you will be able to export questionnaire for current rubric.
• Step 7: Bottom of the navigated page will show 'Export Advices'. When clicked on Export, you will be able to export advices for current rubric.

Rspec Changes

expertiza/spec/controllers/questionnaires_controller_spec.rb

Issue 696:

  def check_access username
    stub_current_user(username,username.role.name,username.role)
    expect(controller.send(:action_allowed?))
  end

  describe '#action_allowed?' do
    let(:questionnaire) { build(:questionnaire, id: 1) }
    let(:instructor) { build(:instructor, id: 1) }
    let(:ta) { build(:teaching_assistant, id: 10, parent_id: 66) }
    context 'when params action is edit or update' do
      before(:each) do
        controller.params = {id: '1', action: 'edit'}
        controller.request.session[:user] = instructor
      end

      context 'when the role name of current user is super admin or admin' do
        it 'allows certain action' do
          check_access(admin).to be true
        end
      end

      context 'when current user is the instructor of current questionnaires' do
        it 'allows certain action' do
          check_access(instructor).to be true
        end
      end

      context 'when current user is the ta of the course which current questionnaires belongs to' do
        it 'allows certain action' do
          allow(TaMapping).to receive(:exists?).with(ta_id: 8, course_id: 1).and_return(true)
          check_access(ta).to be true
        end
      end
      context 'when current user is a ta but not the ta of the course which current questionnaires belongs to' do
        it 'does not allow certain action' do
          allow(TaMapping).to receive(:exists?).with(ta_id: 10, course_id: 1).and_return(false)
          controller.request.session[:user] = instructor2
          check_access(ta).to be false
        end
      end

      context 'when current user is the instructor of the course which current questionnaires belongs to' do
        it 'allows certain action' do
          allow(Course).to receive(:find).with(1).and_return(double('Course', instructor_id: 6))
          check_access(instructor).to be true
        end
      end

      context 'when current user is an instructor but not the instructor of current course or current questionnaires' do
        it 'does not allow certain action' do
          allow(Course).to receive(:find).with(1).and_return(double('Course', instructor_id: 66))
          check_access(instructor2).to be false

        end
      end
    end


    context 'when params action is not edit and update' do
      before(:each) do
        controller.params = {id: '1', action: 'new'}
      end

      context 'when the role current user is super admin/admin/instructor/ta' do
        it 'allows certain action except edit and update' do
          check_access(admin).to be true
        end
      end
    end
  end

expertiza/spec/controllers/question_advice_spec.rb

Issue 577:

describe QuestionAdvice do
  let(:questionnaire) { Questionnaire.new id: 1, name: "abc", private: 0, min_question_score: 0, max_question_score: 10, instructor_id: 1234 }
  let(:question) { build(:question, id: 1) }
  let(:question_advice) { build(:question_advice) }
  describe 'has correct csv values?' do
    before(:each) do
      create(:questionnaire)
      create(:question)
      create(:question_advice)
      @options = {}
    end
    def generated_csv(t_questionnaire, t_options)
      delimiter = ','
      CSV.generate(col_sep: delimiter) do |csv|
        csv << QuestionAdvice.export_fields(t_options)
        QuestionAdvice.export(csv, t_questionnaire.id, t_options)
      end
    end

    it 'checks_if_csv has the correct question advice data' do
      expected_csv = File.read('spec/features/question_advice_export_csv/expected_question_advice_export_csv.txt')
      expect(generated_csv(questionnaire, @options)).to eq(expected_csv)
    end
  end
end

External Links

1. Link to forked repository [[1]]

References

Expertiza

• https://expertiza.ncsu.edu/

Expertiza Github

• https://github.com/expertiza/expertiza

Expertiza Documentation

• http://wiki.expertiza.ncsu.edu/index.php/Expertiza_documentation