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Assign competences manually

1 Initial Problem

In ILIAS 5.1 competences  are assigned by self-evaluation or automated measuring.

There are, however, many instances (my guess: 95% of all use cases today), where competences are still evaluated "offline" or manually through exams, presentations, .... Tutors (and course / group admins) should have a way of assigning competences to a course and selecting the competence levels for their users manually.

This functionality should also be available in groups. The follwoing concepts include groups implictly.

2 Conceptual Summary

• I propose adding a new tab of "Competences" for courses and groups (as a start) on which competences from the competences tree (and the resepective competence level that the user has achieved) can be assigned to a course / group as relevant.
• The competences management should have to be enabled by the course / group admin for a course / group.
• Course admins should have to chance of then "accrediting" their course / group members the competences level that they have reached in the course.
• Competences evanluations should be invisible or "unpublished" until the course admin publishes them for either all or single course /group members.
• Competences which have been assigned and publishedually should then be listed in the user's competence management (just like automatically assigned ones) or the "Show" screen of the course's competence tab.
• To make this clear: the process should be split up in two steps. 1) assigning competences and 2) publishing them for the users to know.
• a new cron job should be created, which sends out email notifications about new competence assignment to the learners
• a new permission for the course / group "Grade" is neccessary to determine those users, who are allowed to "assign" / accredit competences to others (i.e. teaching staff should be able to do this vs. student tutors might not be allowed)

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• Course > Settings: New option for activating competences
• Course > Competences, new, including subtabs:
  • Show
  • Members
  • Competence Selection
  • Settings
• Course Members (Settings "passed status" will need Grade permission)

3.2 User Interface Details

Course > Settings

• Additional Features: New checkbox "Competences". If activated the new tab "Competences" should become visible (default: not activated).

Course > Seetings > Competences

• This screen might hold all settings that are concerned with the comopetence assignment of a course.
• The first setting that should be listed there is the option to choose
  • publish competences automatically and directly after the assignment
  • [default] publish competences manually by tutor

Course > Competences > Show

• The screen is accessible for users having the read permission for the course.
• This screen lists all competences being selected by a tutor on the "Competence Selection" screen.
• The presentation and actions works similar to the "My Competences" screen on the personal desktop.

If no competences have been assign to a course yet, this screen should show a message "There are currently no competences assigned to this course".

Side blocks like the calendar should not be presented on this screen to save space for the competence table.

Course > Competences > Competence Selection

• The screen is only accessible for users having the new "Grade" permission for courses. (See JF 25 Jul 2016)
• The screen contains a table Selected Competences containing the already selected competences.
  • Checkbox column and a multi-action "Remove".
  • Column Title: Containing the title for the competence
  • Column Path: Containing the path of the competence in the competence tree.
• If multiple competences are selected and the Remove button is clicked a usual confirmation screen will appear. A information message will make clear that removing competences from the list will not remove and competence assignments to course members, if this has been already done in the past.
• On top of the table a button Add Competences will appear. This button will open a competence selection tree (using checkboxes) that allows to select multiple competences and add them to the table. (see next screenshot)

Course > Competences > Members

• This screen is accessible for users who have the "Grade" permission.
• A table Members that contains one row for each member (open: should administrators and tutors really be listed?)
  • Columns: Checkbox, Name, Account/Login, Role
  • Column: Assigned Competences (multiple entries per user, open: How should the competence (and its path) be presented)
  • Column: Published status (open issue: this status may not be the same for all assigned competences, so a "partially" status may be possible)
  • Column Action: Action menu for each member containing actions "Assign Competences", "Delete Evaluations", "Publish Evaluations"
  • Multi Actions Edit, ...: These features will not be implemented yet (for future versions).
• Assign Competences: will lead to screen Assign Competences (see below).
• Delete evaluation: leads to a confirmation screen that deassigns all competence evaluations for this user. This is also possible for published assignments.
• Publish Evaluations: Will finally assign the competence levels to the members. Before this step is done, assignments will only be stored internally in the course, the competence management will be called when competences are published.

Course > Competences > Members > Assign Competences

Killing, Alexander [alex], 4 Nov 2016: For me it is unclear how this assignment screen/workflow should work in detail. Especially if we allow to edit/delete things after publishing, when/how will the user be informed?
Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 25.11.2016:  I think, we could live with fixed competence assignments  once they have been published.
Killing, Alexander [alex], 5.12.2016: General options would be a) do not allow to change published competence assignments b) "replace" the existing entry for the user with a new one (new date) c) add an additional entry for the same course for the user.

Personal Desktop > My Competences

Published evaluations will become visible on this screen, if the corresponding skill is a selected skill of the user. The corresponding row will contain

• the course title (linked, if accessible)
• the fact that this has been an External Evaluation / Fremdeinschätzung
• the date of publishing

Killing, Alexander [alex], 4 Nov 2016: Marcos original suggestion contained the name of the assigning tutor as well. The external evaluations of 360° surveys do not list the raters in any way. Implementing this consitently could become very complex. I would prefer not to include the tutors names here.
Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 25.11.2016: If that makes it easier, then leave the tutor's name out.

Assignment Notification Mail

A cron job will send daily (open: only this schedule is allowed) notifications about changes of the course competence assignments. Since multiple actions could be performed since the last notification (e.g. removed a competence level, added it again, changed the level, ...). The notification will

• state the competence assignments  have been changed (but not list the detailed actions),
• list all currently assigned (published) competence levels by the course,
• contain the course name and the name of the tutorial support (if available).

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

No new user interface concepts will be introduced with this feature.

4 Technical Information

Killing, Alexander [alex], 4 Nov 2016

• The JF asked on 25 Jul 2016 to introduce a new "Grade" permission that allows to a) set the passed status and b) manage the competences. What about the permission to edit the learning progress? Should this be kept separately? For many scenarios completed (LP status) and passed (course status) are the same.

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 25.11.2016: I think these permissions should be kept separate since there are many universitie swhich opt at using the competence system but who do not dare to switch on the learning progress.

{The maintainer has to provide necessary technical information, e.g. dependencies on other ILIAS components, necessary modifications in general services/architecture, potential security or performance issues.}

5 Funding

If you are interest in funding this feature, please add your name and institution to this list.

• Universität Freiburg

6 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Marko Glaubitz, Universität Freiburg marko.glaubitz@rz.uni-freiburg.de
• Maintainer: Killing, Alexander [alex], Meyer, Stefan [smeyer]
• Implementation of the feature is done by Killing, Alexander [alex]

7 Discussion

AT: The Member-Tab cannot be used since we have at least a two-step process: 

1. Select competences that can be manually assigned in this course. 
2. Assign leveles of those competences to members. 

We do not have a third level of subnavigation. 
I suggest to have a new tab "Competences" with two sub-tabs:

• "Competence Selection" or "Settings" to choose which competences are relevant for manual assignment in this particular course 
• "Competence Level Assignment" to actually assign competence levels to course members. 

The manual assignment is displayed on the Personal Desktop as "Course xy Appraisal, date " or " xy Tutor Appraisal, date"

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], July 25, 2016: We highly appreciate the feature request and schedule it for 5.2 with the following changes:

• We prefer to have a cron service for notifying users about new assigned competences.
• We like to have two options to show assigned competences within the course: 'publish automatically after assignment' and 'publish manually by tutor'. If 'publish manually…' is chosen, a message is displayed how many participants need to be notified about newly assigned competences.
• We want a dedicated permission "Grade User" that allows to assign competences and to set the 'passed' status (formerly related to WRITE permission).

Suittenpointner, Florian [suittenpointner], August 03, 2016:
I posted a quite similar proposal Simplify External Assessment, maybe this could be considered when designing this feature.

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 04. Nov. 2016: Regarding Alex's questions:

1. cron job schedules: I think daily should be enough
2. editing skill evaluations after publishing them: if this poses a grave technical obstacle, I could live with fixed evaluations. There should then be a confirmation screen, which warns the course / group admin about the fact that these evaluations cannot be taken back once the have been published.
3. permission: "grade" vs "edit LP": this feature should be kept entirely independent from the LP. I still support a separate permission

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], Dec 05, 2016: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 5.3.

1. We would like to skip to role column and show competences for course members only.
2. If tutor changes competence assignments for a user and a distinct competence, the corresponding entry in competence presentation of the user will be updated (means date and level will be updated).
3. If competence assignments are deleted they will disappear from the user presentation.
4. The 'Members' screen where competencies are shown per user and assigned to users should have one row per user with multiple competencies.
5. Button "Alle Einschätzungen veröffentlichen" on 'Members' screen has to move into the toolbar.
6. Screen for editing competency assignments should use a standard form and dropdowns for compentence assignments. And the dropdown should get an additional value "No competence assigned".

8 Implementation

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 11.08.2017 by ezenzen

• C18634: Manuelle Zuweisung der Kompetenzausprägungen aktivieren 
• C18635: Zuweisung von Kompetenzausprägungen 
• C18636: Zugewiesene Kompetenzausprägungen veröffentlichen
• C18637: Zugewiesene Kompetenzen zurücksetzen 
• C18638:  Zugewiesene Kompetenzen einsehen 

Approval

Approved at 24.8.2017 by Marko Glaubitz.