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Courses are created as a type "course". Here are some "brief" steps.
1. When creating the course site, there is a dropdown for the term. The user selects this term, which currently is controlled by the sakai.properties configuration file in the tomcat instance.
Problem: this data is not synchronized with external Banner data, so only one term may appear that may be applicable (e.g. dropdown says Summer 06, when really it should say Summer Session II).
2. User then is prompted for how the roster should be established. The user is then asked to select something like " 2005,FALL,SMPL,001,001" or "Choose user roster not listed from above". The user selects the roster not listed from above.
3. User is asked to fill in (textbox) the "Subject","Course", and "Section" for this course site.
Problem This is ad-hoc, and user's have limited space to add the course information. Again, this is entirely controlled by parameters set in the sakai.properties file.
4. The user is asked to add more rosters, and authorization person's name if necessary. Usually rosters are not added, and authorizer's name is something like kdalex@ucdavis.edu.
5. From here, the course site is created with a default tool set the user selects from.
6. After site is created, rosters are added to it (via MyUCDavis,etc)
Problem Rosters are still not dynamic, as providers have not been compeletely enabled
7. End result: Tab has something like BIS 01A 001 Su06 because of the limited characters, and abbreviations of terms pulled from the sakai.properties information.
Problem Sites cannot be reconciled easily, and content cannot be migrated easily in the future unless changes are made to more closely resemble our batching mechanism.
Current Batching Strategy
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1. creates course site "skeleton" with the following attributes:
i. creates site id with a pattern of TERMCD and CRN. An example is 20061012345
ii. creates a site title (tab) with the pattern (this is a MAJOR difference from the manual process)
iia. SUBJ COURSENUMBER SECTION TERMABBREVIATION TERMYEAR (e.g. BIS 001A 001 SSS WQ06)
ProblemTERMABBREVIATION is given below as the associated abbreviations for the terms. This is an internal mechanism to Sakai as a lookup mechanism.
Here is the logic for TERMABBREVIATION resolution, described in code:
if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("01")) return "WQ";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("02")) return "SSEM";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("03")) return "SQ";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("04")) return "ES";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("05")) return "SS1";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("06")) return "SSS";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("07")) return "SS2";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("08")) return "SUQ";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("09")) return "FSEM";
else if (TermIdentifier.equalsIgnoreCase("10")) return "FQ";
else return "ALT";
iii. adds site information also (e.g. description, long description, etc)
2. adds tools and pages to the site (from a sakai.properties configuration)
3. creates the site so that providers can "kick in" and create rosters, roles dynamically
What should happen
1. We should modify our existing course site titles to reflect those of the batching process, so that there is minimal confusion between an Su06 site (intended on being Summer Session I), and say a Su06 site (intended on being Special Summer Session).
2. We should change the following properties in sakai.properties to reflect our external data. Note, that this synchronization is enabled in Sakai 2.2 via the site manage functionality.
Here is an example of some of the properties we should change.
- course management information (term)
termterm.count=17
termterm.1=FALL
termterm.2=WINTER
termterm.3=SPRING
termterm.4=SPRING_SUMMER
termterm.5=SUMMER
termterm.6=FALL
termterm.7=WINTER
termterm.8=SPRING
termterm.9=SPRING_SUMMER
termterm.10=SUMMER
termterm.11=FALL
termterm.12=WINTER
termterm.13=SPRING
termterm.14=SPRING_SUMMER
termterm.15=SUMMER
termterm.16=FALL
termterm.17=WINTER
...
termendtime.count=17
termendtime.1=20031201000000000
termendtime.2=20040501000000000
termendtime.3=20040801000000000
termendtime.4=20040801000000000
termendtime.5=20040901000000000
termendtime.6=20041201000000000
termendtime.7=20050501000000000
termendtime.8=20050801000000000
termendtime.9=20050801000000000
termendtime.10=20050901000000000
termendtime.11=20051201000000000
termendtime.12=20060501000000000
termendtime.13=20060801000000000
termendtime.14=20060801000000000
termendtime.15=20060901000000000
termendtime.16=20061201000000000
termendtime.17=20070501000000000
3. Additionally, we should modify the default length of the course, subject , and section text fields in the worksite setup UI so that we can have more flexibility.