JourFixe-2014-05-26

The Jour Fixe takes place at Monday, May 26, 2014, from 12h30 - 17h30 at ILIAS open source eLearning e.V. in Cologne. Participants:

• Michael Jansen, Alexander Killing, Matthias Kunkel (Minutes), Jörg Lützenkirchen, Stefan Meyer
• Temporarily participated via BBB: Marko Glaubitz

1 Appointments

2014-05-27: Core Developer Meeting
2014-06-17: SIG E-Assessment, DHBW Karlsruhe
2014-06-20: ILIAS@Schule in Hamburg
2014-06-23: Jour Fixe (no Jour Fixe at June 09 due to Pentecost)
2014-07-01: Annual meeting of ILIAS Advisory Council, Fürth
2014-07-02: ILIAS-Süd at Uni Erlangen in Fürth
2014-07-08: SIG Performance, ILIAS office, Cologne
2014-09-29: ILIAS Development Conference in Bozen
2014-09-30 - 10-01: 13th International ILIAS Conference in Bozen

2 Bugfixing for maintained versions 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4

Last releases:

• ILIAS 4.4.3 published at May 14, 2014
• ILIAS 4.3.7 published at March 21, 2014
• ILIAS 4.2.9 published at September 04, 2013

• 4.4.4 is scheduled for June 2014
• 4.3.8 is scheduled for June 2014
• 4.2.10 is scheduled for May 2014

We went through Mantis and had a overlook about all open issues reported or modified since the last Jour Fixe. All issues were screened and assigned to the responsible developers. We discussed in detail:

1. Mantis 10940: Limited Number of Members exceeded in onrush: We appreciate the fix and schedule Better Support for mass registration as usability fix for 4.5.
2. Mantis 13102: Kiosk mode: "Go to Introductory Message" not useful: We do not consider this being a bug. The questions raised by Björn should be discussed in the feature wiki, if the behaviour should be changed for an upcoming test. Please create a feature request for this case.
3. Usability Issue: Individual Availability of "One Feedback File for all Learners": As a usability fix we als accept to make it configurable if the sample solution should become available with submission or with the deadline of an assignment (see Tutor Feedback in Peer Feedback Mode)
4. Mantis 13248: SCORM Ping Session Issue: We agree that ilSession::getIdleValue() is the function to use here.
5. Mantis 13346: Registration mail - time limit info: If the account is limited (fixed end date in the future) the timelimit block should always be included in the registration mail.

3 Feature Requests for ILIAS 4.5

3.1 ILIAS 4.5 Statistics
 

According to the presentation at the last Development Conference we want to improve the documentation of the development process. The data of the following overview of development activities for the next upcoming major release is taken from the page Release 5.0. All developers are requested to update the status of their features.

3.2 ILIAS 4.5 Development Issues

1. Up / Down Voting for Forum Topics: We reject the additional button. The column header "Last Article" and "Rating" should be clickable/sortable instead. In both cases the sticky threads are put on top and their (manually configured) order "overwrite" the user selected order. AND it should be possible to (de-)activated the rating feature for each forum.
2. Check permissions when sending mails to course or group members: We suggest the following: 
   • To be able to send a mail to any local role of an object the user needs "Read" and "Send mails to local roles".
   • The setting "Mail to Members" in groups/courses is set to "All Participants", if the member role has the "Send mails to local roles" permission. This means the setting reflects and sets the permission for members directly.
   • In general this does not mean, e.g. for courses, that the user needs to be member, tutor or admin. "Read" and "Send mails to locals roles" permission is given for administrators, too. Or for roles that are protected (inheritance is not broken on the level of a course) and have both permissions (local admin scenario).
3. Progress status for learning modules: We support the general behaviour of the icons as outlined by AK above and schedule the feature for 4.5.
4. File as Peer Feedback: We support the feature and schedule it for 4.5.
5. Tutor Feedback in Peer Feedback Mode: We support the changes as outlined by Jörg, Matthias and Alex on 21 May 2014 and schedule the request for 4.5.
6. Notification for edited Postings: Thanks for the content suggestion. The text of censored postings should not be sent, the general guidelines for mails should be respected. If postings are deleted only the "top" posting should be included in the notification. The PM and the maintainer will work out a final version.
7. Accordeon behavior: We agree with Yvonne Seiler's suggestion but would prefer to place the icons on top in the case of horizontal accordions.

3.3 Feature Requests for 4.5

The following list contains features that have been added to the Feature Wiki before feature freeze and are supported by the responsible component maintainer, see also Feature Requests 5.0. Please do not add new features on this list.

1. Personal Desktop: Usability Improvements of the Personal Desktop : We do not want to introduce a general rule like "All entries should be representable as blocks". We also think it is a good starting point to discuss navigation and information items separately. Information items could be kept on the PD as blocks, for navigation features a different user interface approach could be discussed. We should try to identify possible incremental implementation steps and decide on them.
2. Plugin Slots: Shorter Table Prefix for Plugins : There have been no strong preferences in the JF to change the guideline. There are also pros with the existing guideline, e.g. that tables belonging to the same slot are grouped together (qpl_qst_...)  when listed alphabetically (e.g. in phpMyAdmin). We will discuss this on the core dev meeting tomorrow again.
3. ILIAS LM: Learning Progress on visited pages : We support the request to add a new LP mode that sets the progress of the complete(!) learning module to completed, if all pages have been visited.
   • Current status can be visualized as outlined by Progress status for learning modules. We cannot determine a "time spent" value per page reliably, so visiting means "has been clicked".
   • Important: In our understanding, this mode checks only, if all pages have been visited. Not if all questions have been answered correctly.
   • Open Issue: What happens if the tutor adds new pages to the lm, once a learner has reached the completed LP status? Our current preference is, that once a learner has reached the overall object completed status, the LP status will be kept, even if new pages are added. ILIAS should show an information message in the editing mode, if users have already completed the LM.
   • In this way we appreciate this request and schedule it for 4.5.
4. ILIAS LM: LM Chapters / Pages as Preconditions in ILIAS LM : We would prefer to start with the Restrict Navigation based on Questions request, too, and postpone this request for now.
5. ILIAS LM: Transfer of changes to embedded questions in LM to the original question in question pool : As explained by Alexander, the features and editing of the self assessment mode are limited. E.g. the T&A editor supports TinyMCE editing with HTML. These information and several settings "get lost" when being copied to the learning module. This would lead to undesired side effects when being copied back to the pool, where these informations may need to be used in the usual T&A contect (e.g. tests). Due to these reasons we currently cannot schedule this request.

3.4 Postponed

The following features requests have been postponed to the next Jour Fixe due to missing time.

1. ILIAS Page Editor: Add comments to single text-/media elements - needs to be discussed with Suggestions for an Improved ILIAS Page Editor (outdated)
2. ILIAS Page Editor: (Advisory Council) Linking_in_ILIAS_Editor - needs to be discussed with Suggestions for an Improved ILIAS Page Editor (outdated)
3. ILIAS Page Editor: Media object image/media: custom size in percent - technical discussion needed in Jour Fixe
4. Wiki: Extending Linking Options in Wiki - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe
5. Wiki: Extending User Activities for Page Editing, Protecting and Deleting - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe
6. Core / General: Use minify to combine javascript and css - No existing maintainership.
7. File Handling: Filename Encoding - Not related to one distinct maintainership.
8. Administration: Default object settings - Not related to one distinct maintainership.
9. Logging: Log-Level - No maintainer yet
10. Logging: Object History - No maintainer yet
11. ECS: ECS Membership Status
12. ECS: Configuration of ECS Meta Data
13. ECS: Deactivation of ECS token Mechanism
14. Calendar: Better Performance for Recurring Calendar Appointments
15. Course / Group: Better support for mass registration
16. Repository: Precondition Triggers Learning Module and Plugin
17. Exercise: Personalised Peer Feedback
18. Test: Abandon Flash Question Type
19. Test: Abandon Java Applet Question Type
20. Test: Excel-Export: disable setting shuffle questions
21. Test: Item export: Include hints and media objects
22. Learning Module SCORM: SCORM without iframe/frames / Support for HTML5-Learning Modules

4 Miscellaneous

• General Export Guidelines: Enhancement/Clarification
• Next Developer Meeting: We meet us at Tuesday, May 27, from 9 a.m to 1 p.m at the ILIAS office in Cologne
• Next Jour Fixe: Monday, June 23, 2014, from 12h30 until 17h30 at the office of ILIAS-Verein in Cologne.