Deleting sections

[s.qasim]

Once I have created sections under a course i can't delete them.

[Tom Hoffman (tom-hoffman)]

Basically, you aren't supposed to be able to delete sections, because sections provide the context for a lot of essential data in SchoolTool.

A lot of the inconsistencies you're experiencing is because you were determined enough to kill your sections, which nobody had really tried to do before. So we either need to make it even more impossible to delete sections, or recover more gracefully when the go away.

[Tom Hoffman (tom-hoffman)]

Also, we need to had "hiding" functionality so that you can make unwanted sections disappear from your interface without actually deleting them.

Not being able to delete sections is a pain when your starting out and experimenting. But a much smaller pain than the pain of accidentally or inappropriately deleting sections after you've been using SchoolTool for a few years and losing essential data about students.

[s.qasim (s-qasim)]

I agree - hiding is a good idea. The end result is the same i.e. not visible to everyone.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Hoffman" <email address hidden>
To: "s qasim" <email address hidden>
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2009 9:36:00 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [Bug 447633] Re: Deleting sections

Also, we need to had "hiding" functionality so that you can make
unwanted sections disappear from your interface without actually
deleting them.

Not being able to delete sections is a pain when your starting out and
experimenting.  But a much smaller pain than the pain of accidentally or
inappropriately deleting sections after you've been using SchoolTool for
a few years and losing essential data about students.

--
Deleting sections
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/447633
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of the bug.

Status in SchoolTool: New

Bug description:
Once I have created sections under a course i can't delete them.

[Tom Hoffman (tom-hoffman)]

Now that I've got access to a running SchoolTool instance, I've explored this a little more.

Technically, you can delete sections, if you go to the section index for a term, for example:

http://localhost:7080/schoolyears/2009-2010/fall-2009/sections/

However, we don't really want you to do that, so there isn't actually any link leading you to that page.

As I said above, what we really need to add is the hiding functionality.

[pabene (pabene)]

What is the best method for unregistering a student or group of students from a section?

[Tom Hoffman (tom-hoffman)]

You should be able to do it from the same form you use to add them: http://book.schooltool.org/htmlhelp/sections.html#adding-and-editing-instructors-and-pupils

There is a larger issue that I was just discussing with Jeff Elkner on the phone. There is no explicit way to mark a student as withdrawn from a section -- you can only delete them. For grading purposes you should probably add a "W" to whatever score system you use for term grades.

If you have a lot of mobility you should also make terms short, because you technically have a separate section for each term in a multi-term section. So if you made the terms in SchoolTool correspond to quarters, and someone withdrew the first quarter, you could explicitly delete them from the subsequent "linked" sections in later terms.

Also, if you want to shoot me a quick email at <email address hidden> and let me know the context of how you'd like to use SchoolTool, I might be able to give you some more general advice.