CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2013/oss E810 aas

E810 Regularize staggered-deadline assignments

This page provides a description of the OSS project conducted on Expertiza which was done as the part of the Object Oriented Languages and Systems coursework.

Introduction to Expertiza

Expertiza is a project developed using Ruby on Rails platform. It supports peer review, team assignments and submission of projects using any method like URL, wiki page or even code. It is open source application and the code can be cloned from github. This application provides the efficient way to manage assignments, grades and reviews. This makes the process easier and faster when the class strength is large.

Expertiza is supported by National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0536558. Additional funding from the NCSU Learning in a Technology-Rich Environment (LITRE) program, the NCSU Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, the NCSU STEM Initiative, and the Center for Advanced Computing and Communication.

Problem Statement

According to the existing code flow, Assignment deadlines belonged to two categories i.e. Staggered Deadlines and Deadlines (Normal Due Date). If an Assignment has different topics which have dependencies i.e. if Assignment A has two topics Topic A and Topic B , where Topic A can have deadline before Topic B, and therefore the Due Date of Assignment A is dependent on deadlines of Topics designed in that particular assignment. Hence these deadlines are called Staggered Deadlines. On the other hand, If Assignment A has Topic A and Topic B, but they all have the same deadlines i.e. there is no dependency on each other then that's Normal Due Date scenario. In this case an Assignment may or may not have separate Topics.

Original code had various check statements for staggered and normal deadlines, which had to eliminated and structured in a way that with minimum checks we could distinguish between Staggered and Normal Due Dates. This required refactoring and restructuring of the whole functionality where we reduce these checks by distributing code into separate actions.

Re-factored Code Cases

Case 1 : Refactoring in sign_up_sheet_controller.rb

Current Scenario

Different method definitions for setting up staggered and non-staggered assignment sign up sheet.

1. method:add_signup_topics_staggered

This method lists all the available topics for an assignment and allows admin to set due dates for assignment.Staggered means that different topics can have different deadlines.

 def add_signup_topics_staggered
   load_add_signup_topics(params[:id])

   @review_rounds = Assignment.find(params[:id]).get_review_rounds
   @topics = SignUpTopic.find_all_by_assignment_id(params[:id])

   #Use this until you figure out how to initialize this array
   @duedates = SignUpTopic.find_by_sql("SELECT s.id as topic_id FROM sign_up_topics s WHERE s.assignment_id = " + params[:id].to_s)

   if !@topics.nil?
     i=0
     @topics.each { |topic|

       @duedates[i]['t_id'] = topic.id
       @duedates[i]['topic_identifier'] = topic.topic_identifier
       @duedates[i]['topic_name'] = topic.topic_name

       for j in 1..@review_rounds
         if j == 1
           duedate_subm = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('submission').id)
           duedate_rev = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('review').id)
         else
           duedate_subm = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id_and_round(topic.id,              DeadlineType.find_by_name('resubmission').id, j)
           duedate_rev = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id_and_round(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('rereview').id, j)
         end
         if !duedate_subm.nil? && !duedate_rev.nil?
           @duedates[i]['submission_'+ j.to_s] = DateTime.parse(duedate_subm['due_at'].to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
           @duedates[i]['review_'+ j.to_s] = DateTime.parse(duedate_rev['due_at'].to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
         else
           #the topic is new. so copy deadlines from assignment
           set_of_due_dates = DueDate.find_all_by_assignment_id(params[:id])
           set_of_due_dates.each { |due_date|
             create_topic_deadline(due_date, 0, topic.id)
           }
           # code execution would have hit the else part during review_round one. So we'll do only round one
           duedate_subm = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('submission').id)
           duedate_rev = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('review').id)
           @duedates[i]['submission_'+ j.to_s] = DateTime.parse(duedate_subm['due_at'].to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
           @duedates[i]['review_'+ j.to_s] = DateTime.parse(duedate_rev['due_at'].to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
         end

       end
       duedate_subm = TopicDeadline.find_by_topic_id_and_deadline_type_id(topic.id, DeadlineType.find_by_name('metareview').id)
       if !duedate_subm.nil?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         @duedates[i]['submission_'+ (@review_rounds+1).to_s] = DateTime.parse(duedate_subm['due_at'].to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
       else
         @duedates[i]['submission_'+ (@review_rounds+1).to_s] = nil
       end
       i = i + 1
     }
   end
 end