OAE D2L Integration: Proof of Concept

Some quick notes on a proof-of-concept integration between the Open Academic Environment (OAE) and Desire2Learn (D2L). The focus of this effort is assessment of student assignments. This post considers the implications for OAE.

System Roles

• Students use OAE for all interactions relating to submission of work for assessment.
• Instructors use D2L for all interactions relating to assessment of student work.

Typical Scenario

1. (Optional) As OAE user, student receives a notification of impending assignment due date.
2. Student designates any OAE content (owned by the student) as work to be submitted for assessment. Student identifies the specific class and assignment for the work.
3. A copy of the content is transferred to D2L for assessment by the instructor.
4. Student receives confirmation that content was successfully transmitted to D2L. The content's revision history includes an indication of the submission (along with date and time).
5. (Optional) Student checks the "assessment status" of the content to see whether or not it has been evaluated.
6. (Optional) Student and instructor engage in discussion related to content/assessment. Only student is able to view this discussion in OAE (regardless of the public/private profile of the content). Student receives notification of new discussion comments from instructor.
7. Instructor provides evaluation (e.g. grade) for assignment, which student views on OAE (e.g. as part of content/assessment discussion). Student receives notification of evaluation.
8. (Optional) Discussion may continue after evaluation.
9. (Optional) Student may submit revised work.
10. (Optional) Instructor may revise evaluation.

Potential Complications

• Student may re-submit the same content for the same assignment. In this case the content's revision history should reflect multiple submissions.
• Student may submit new content for the same assignment. In this case the assessment status for the original content should indicate that new content was submitted for the assignment.
• Student may re-submit the same content for a different assignment. In this case the same content may have multiple evaluations.

Questions

• How (if at all) will the system handle discussions related to an assignment before any content is submitted for assessment?
• What (if any) are the policies on submission? (e.g. no re-submissions, no submissions past due date, ...) Are they fixed or do they vary by assignment? How are they enforced? (e.g. by the D2L API) Are those policies exposed prior to a submission attempt? (e.g. by the D2L API)

Initial Design Mockups

First thoughts are that assessment is going to be very important to the users, so it may warrant it's own clip, as in the following:

Alternatives:

• Move Assessment clip to right side
• Incorporate assessment functionality in main clip (although it would likely force a multi-line action list, which may present usability problems
• Incorporate assessment functionality in Share clip (possibly renaming it as well)

The assessment actions would be to submit (or resubmit), discuss, or check status, as in

Alternatives:

• Incorporate assessment discussions within content comments, either intermingled or as separate section (e.g. above comments or in a parallel column). (Note: unlike comments, assessment discussions should only be visible to content owner.)
• Incorporate assessment status in thumbnail icon and name in main clip
• If the preceding two alternatives are adopted, the submit action could be moved to the standard Share clip.