Monday, July 2, 2012

Wishlist/Enhancements to 9.1SP8 cross-listing/merge enrollments


I'm coming up with a list of enhancements we'd like to see for the current 9.1SP8 cross-listing/merge enrollments feature.  We're coming from the Bb Section Merge Tool (SMT), so some of it comes from features we've used there.

Administrative/System-level
  • Allow instructors to create the merge 
  • Allow one-to-many feeds (e.g., one source site could be the child of multiple target sites) 
  • Document some migration path between the SMT and the new course merge 
  • Instructors > My Courses module should indent the child sites (and allow for expansion/collapse) or allow child sites to be hidden completely from view 

Course-level
  • Tools that communicate with students (Announcements, Messages, Send Email) should be able to use Child Course membership to select audience 
  • Adaptive Release should be able to use Child Course membership 
  • Groups should be able to use Child Course membership when creating groups 
  • Grade Center / SmartViews - allow criteria Child Course ID condition "is blank" or "does not contain" (which is useful if you are merging enrollments into section 01 for instance, and want a smartview of section 01) 

Before I submit, I wanted to see if anyone else had things on their wish list...

5 comments:

  1. Some other suggestions I received:

    Richards C.R. wrote:
    >
    > I think I would agree with most of your points and add a few more comments
    >
    >
    > Allowing instructors to merge – ONLY if it is an administrative option please, we would not want this. As we don’t allow instructors to create courses and because many have multiple instructors, we would not want to enable this
    >
    >
    >
    > I hadn’t thought about multiple target sites but actually I think we need even more than this in that we have some instances where students on whole groups of modules need to access a single support course in addition to their main modules. It would be good if it were possible to merge enrolments onto a single course, WITHOUT making the child courses unavailable and without merging any content as such. It has made me realise that we are still going to need to retain part of our special enrol process. I think our choice here would be to add the facility to merge enrolments onto a single site WITHOUT making the child sites unavailable or merging any content
    >
    > As for the course level requirements then I think that all the points could be achievd by one simple addition – Have the process automatically create groups for each of the child courses –simples!
    >
    >
    > One last thing I think I might add would be a prompt coming up to change the course title so that it is clear to students why they are seeing a different course (again an option)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michko, Georgette M wrote:
    > All of your suggestions sound right on. We would benefit from those improvements also.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joan Marie T wrote:
    > All suggestions look great to me too.
    >
    > With the Section Merge tool there was a way to merge the classes on the server side using Notepad ++ and the XML transformer tool. Is this possible with the way section merges are being done without the building block?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joseph Gliddon wrote:

    > eReserve Content areas for child courses remain available even if child course isn't available

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey, just found your page and the topics are spot on. Great suggestions regarding SP8. Can you provide more information about the CMT you are using? We have merge capability in the Admin Panel since SP8 but looking for a way to allow instructors to manage this on there own. I've seen a ton of schools doing this, but wondering if everyone is shelling out for the "BB Custom Consulting" or if I'm missing the boat on something free.

    THANKS!

    ReplyDelete