CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2020 - E2077. Mentor management for assignments without topics E2024

Project Overview

Background

Currently, Expertiza has no way to associate mentors with teams. For assignments with topics, like the OSS project, mentors are associated with topics, and then whichever team is assigned to the topic inherits the mentor for that topic, However, for assignments without topics (like Program 2), there is no good way to “automatically” assign mentors to projects.

Objectives

Implement code that will allow a mentor to be directly associated with a team. Notify mentor when they have been assigned to a team via email.

Previous Work

We learned from previous implementations and looked to avoid the following pitfalls when implementing our solution:

• Code was merged from the previous team, but not refactored, so a lot of unused code remained.
• Should have followed a better naming convention for methods
• Some redundant codes in the views could be DRYed out.
• Commented code should be removed.
• Some complex logic is added but not explained in the comments.
• Code should be placed in most relevant classes. (E.g. Do not put email code in the Team class).
• Documentation doesn't accurately represent implementation.
• Lacked sufficient detail for Test section.

Previous Implementation's Wiki

Program Design

We are proposing the following design with our implementation.

Our implementation begins when the team is created. Once a team is created, it prompts a question asking if the assignment that the team is being created before has a topic. If the assignment is associated with a topic, teams are not given a mentor. If the assignment does not have a topic, a list of mentors is queried. The list contains mentors and details the amount of teams each of the mentors is assigned to. A mentor is then selected for the least amount of teams assigned.

Currently instructors would see the corresponding view when looking at teams associated with an assignment:

Our team is proposing to add an additional "Mentors" column in the instructor view:

Our team is proposing to add an additional "Mentors" section in the student view:

Files Modified

List all the files we changed when implementing our project

Models

• assignment.rb
• assignment_team.rb
• assignment_form.rb
• User.rb

Controllers

• assignments_controller.rb
• teams_controller.rb

Views TBD

Testing Plan

Edge Cases

The following are scenarios our team has thought about:

Edge Case 1: How will we handle the "Has topic?" check box being changed when editing the assignment in the instructor view. This button is how we decide if we need to assign mentors to a team.

  Option A: Always run our algorithm for each assignment made and only show which mentors are assigned if the "Has topic?" is not checked
  Option B: Add the functionality to add and remove mentors for all assignments, not just assignments without topics then add and remove mentors when an assignment is edited.

Edge Case 2: No mentors exist

  Option A: Don't assign mentors
  Option B: Prevent creation of teams

RSpec Test

RSpec test to check:

• Validation of the models
• Functionality of controllers

UI Test

In the UI test we are going to verify that:

1. Instructor/Admin verifies the selection of has topics button
2. Student create team and invite others
3. Assign mentor and send emails, when the team is created

Future Implementation

1. Implementing manual mentor assignment capability for instructors assign mentors to a team.

References

Github Repository:
Pull Request:
Previous Implementation's Wiki

Team

Santiago Sepulveda
Skieler Capezza
Liam Donovan
Javier Sanchez
Mentor: Yulin Zhang