Просмотр кода страницы Site-wide groups

== Explaining why we need site-wide groups for enrolment purposes (Dan Poltawski) ==

In my experience the need for site wide groups has not been entirely clear to developers, especially unclear is why existing enrolment plugins are not sufficient for schools (K12/primary/secondary), especially when compared to higher education. I developed the [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1585&filter=1 CLEO MIS Tool] as a stop-gap solution to address some of the deficiencies and this has been very popular. I'm convinced of the need for 'a solution' so I will try and explain the reasons here. 

===Dans Example Simplified school ===

====Components====
* School Moodle
** Maintained by teachers or curriculum support staff 
** Rapidly changing
** Course design can vary across schools/ departments/ teaching staff

* MIS (student information) System
** Contains student details, class lists etc. 
** Maintained by school administrative staff
** Relatively static and standardised, used to generate reports, timetables etc.
** Often contains ''imperfect'' data

* Relevant to both - don't typically have sophisticated technical support to craft data to integrate both

====Existing Solutions====

* Use an enrolment plugin to generate enrolments from MIS System
** Requires a class group from MIS to map directly to a course 
** A moodle course has to be created for every single physical class (not how it works practically- nightmare for teachers)
** The 'course design' to be consistent across school (One teacher might create a single moodle course for all her physical classes, another might created one moodle course shared across classes and other variations).
** 'The power' to do stuff is in the teachers hands - largely automatic rather than teacher choosing who they wish in each course

* Manual Enrolment (This is typically how many many schools use moodle)
** Teacher assigns every user from the complete list (1000+) of users one at a time
** If using groups mode in the course, picks these out individually too
** Massive time hog

* CLEO MIS Tool
** Good
*** Populates 'class groups' (separate db table -unrelated to core stuff) from MIS system via csv import
*** At role assignment time, teacher can select a MIS class group from list and assign all users in group at once (rather than stuednt at a time)
*** Can assign multiple class groups to one course, or any variation
*** Power is in the teachers hands how to organise
*** MIS Grouped enrolment at any role-assignment point
** Bad
*** Intentionally dumb: simply selects the users who are present in a mis group at a specific time and enrols them, changes in MIS groups are not reflected in role assignments over time
*** Doesn't create course level groups in moodle


====The Dream Solution====
* MIS System populates 'global groups' data 
* Global groups can be populated by multiple plugins (extension to existing enrolment plugins?)
* Teacher can assign any number of global groups to a course - these can also populate course groups (for separate groups mode etc.)
* Changes in MIS data reflected in course enrolments (At least for users added)

--[[User:Dan Poltawski|Dan Poltawski]] 06:32, 21 January 2009 (CST)