export groups

[Domi Sinclair]

Just as you can export personal pages it would be good to export groups pages, for both assessment and sharing purposes.

Related to this Mahara forum post: https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=5199#post22458

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Domi,

Aaron from Catalyst IT (NZ) here. Kristina had me take a look at the proposal document you had for this. As I understand it, your use-case is basically:

1. Students create a group project in a Mahara group.

2. The project includes several pages & collections of the group, which are linked together via the group's about page.

3. When it comes time for assessment, staff "lock" the group permanently to keep a grading record

4. Students would like to be able to continue working on their group project after the assessment deadline (using assessment feedback) and they would also like to be able to share/publish the group project. They can't do either of these things when they are locked out of the group.

Is that correct? Also, what method are you using to "lock" the group? (Is it just, removing all the students from the group?)

It sounds like your proposed solution is to allow group members to export the group's pages & collections to HTML. Then the students could export that HTML copy of the group, submit it as a file attachment into Moodle for assessment, and continue using the live group in Mahara. Is that correct?

If so, I think that should be pretty much do-able. One stumbling block is that Mahara's HTML export doesn't currently handle CSS properly (Bug 1317435) but that can be fixed. Some other considerations:

- Which users should have permission to export their group's content? (Would there be privacy concerns about just letting all users export it?)
- Would students also need to export the forum?

There are also a couple of other solutions you could consider, such as:
- The ability to copy a group *within* Mahara (so students would make a copy of the group, and the assessors would freeze and grade that copy instead of the original)
- Adding leap2a export/import for group pages & collections
- Adding leap2a export/import for the whole group (pages & collections, forum posts, member list, settings)
- Add support for groups to the Moodle Mahara assignment submission plugin

However, I think your HTML export proposal would probably be the easiest out of all of these. Possibly the group copy solution would be about the same.

Anyway, please let me know whether I've properly understood your use-case, how you're currently locking groups, your thoughts on export permissions & exporting the forum, and whether any of the alternatives I've described are what you're really after. :)

Cheers,
Aaron

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hm, actually another wrinkle to consider in this, is that in Mahara 15.10, groups can have their own journals as well. If we only export pages & collections, then a group journal will be excluded unless someone puts it into a page via one of the journal blocks.

[Domi Sinclair (domi-sinclair)]

Thanks for getting back to me, certainly a few things to consider.

Ooh group journals is exciting! I'm about to test 15.10 so I'll be sure to check those out!

I need to run the export stuff past my colleague, and with the Mahara Hui UK I probably won't be able to do that til afterward. I'll aim to get back to you later this week :)

Best wishes,

Domi Sinclair
Learning Technologist
E-Learning Environments
University College London

---- Aaron Wells wrote ----

Hm, actually another wrinkle to consider in this, is that in Mahara
15.10, groups can have their own journals as well. If we only export
pages & collections, then a group journal will be excluded unless
someone puts it into a page via one of the journal blocks.

--
You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1437291

Title:
  export groups

Status in Mahara:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Just as you can export personal pages it would be good to export
  groups pages, for both assessment and sharing purposes.

  Related to this Mahara forum post:
  https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=5199#post22458

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1437291/+subscriptions

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hi Aaron,

In regard to the group journal copying: Isn't that the same as in the user export right now? If you don't export your entire account, but only a certain page, you only get what you have placed on that page.

Cheers
Kristina

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Kristina,

That is correct. I think there may be a greater danger of group journals not getting embedded into pages, though. For a single-user journal, no one is ever going to be able to read the journal unless they put it in a page. But for a group journal, all the group members can read the journal without having to put it in a page. So they may not ever think that it's necessary to embed it.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hello Domi and Aaron,

Another idea that came up in a discussion with Karen and Nicola from the University of Roehampton: Including all submitted pages to that group in the archive esp. when the group was used for assessment purposes.

It is true that we can archive individual submissions now when they are being released back to the students. It might be useful though to keep everything in one group archive instead of having to download / find the individual submissions again as they are being stored under a user's name.

Cheers
Kristina

[Domi Sinclair (domi-sinclair)]

Sorry it has taken me a while to respond.

We would definitely want to keep everything in the group as often submission are group work.

I think the journal issue is an interesting one, as it would be necessary for prosperity of the entire group but as far as assessment goes it would be whatever was on the pages that would be counted. Perhaps if we could look at exporting the group pages first, so that they aren't lost once students move on from a project but are needed to comply with assessment regulations or to be displayed (with the students consent) as examples of great work. Then we could look at journals and forums later?

I have the following notes from my colleague Mira:

'Hi Domi,

Aaron's 1-4 - yes broadly correct, although re (2) there is always a slim chance that students use a page other than their group's About page to link things together (not sure if this matters technically).

Aaron asks what method are we using to lock the group at the deadline.
Since all students have Admin role, currently we upload a spreadsheet which converts the students' role from Admin to Member. In the group settings we ensure the Member role can't edit. Sadly, without a way to export/copy the space, the space becomes the sole assessment record and so they can never edit again (hence our request).

Yes, HTML export would be sufficient for our purposes I think, since as you say it allows a fixed version for records while allowing students to treat the Mahara version as a work in progress and continue to edit it. But LEAP2A seems a good idea, since it is in line with what you can do with an individual portfolio.

Regarding who should be able to export a group space, I agree with Domi's suggestion that the Group Admin role should be able to export, but Group Member role shouldn't. This seems the best avenue for managing intellectual property and privacy issues.

Aaron asks should forums be included in the export.
I think this should be an include/exclude setting since I think there is a case to treat the forum as separate.

Thanks,

Mira'

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Domi & Mira,

Okay, it sounds like "HTML export of a group's pages and collections" is the direction you want to go in then? I'll put together an estimate for that. And an estimate for Leap2a export of group pages as well. Quite possibly, it'll be a case where implementing one makes the other easier.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Conveniently, the problem with CSS styling in HTML exports was just fixed in Mahara 15.10.1! (Bug 739528)

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Another idea, would you be interested in exploring a way to automate that group locking process more?

Mahara actually has a "grouptype" plugin type, which allows us to implement different behaviors for groups. (Currently the only two "grouptypes" are "normal", and "course", which adds a "tutor" role that is allowed to release pages submitted to the group.)

So we could add something like a "submittable" or "assessment" grouptype.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Since the export of groups is more of an admin function, should it then also be possible for a site admin to export a group under Administration -> Groups -> When clicking on the "manage group" button next to a group where the admins can be changed and the file quota changed?

That way, a site admin could perform backups more conveniently. Not yet in bulk, but at least without needing to add themselves to the group all the time.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Domi,

After digging into this a little more, I'm a little less sanguine about the HTML export. There are actually several known bugs in HTML export, which result in the exported HTML being a little rough. For instance, the PDF blocktype doesn't work correctly in the export, some image links break, the navigation block breaks, and page themes and skins are not applied (instead the export is styled with a subset of the "default" theme).

Here's a link to the current open bugs for the HTML export: http://bit.ly/1Nm8R8M

I suspect there are more HTML export bugs that we're not aware of, since lately it's been a seldom-used corner of the code.

What we really need to do is a test of every blocktype and artefact type, and all places that accept embedded images, in an HTML export, and see whether they break or not. Kristina suggests you might be willing to help us out with that? And in doing so, you can get a sense of how well the HTML export currently works, and whether the blocks that are most important to your students are working correctly or not.

Cheers,
Aaron

[trabimechanic (m-vogel)]

Hi Aaron, Kristina,

Aaron, you asked about automating the group locking process - this could be very helpful if it could be applied to many groups at once and/or via a csv file, since currently the Editability end date has to be set for each group space individually (i.e. can't be set via the csv file). Hopefully I have understood your suggestion correctly.

However, on its own that does not solve the issue of preserving a version exactly as it was at the time of submission (as a record e.g. for external examiners at the end of the year), and at the same time allowing another version to be editable e.g. for ongoing development in response to assessment feedback.

Kristina, your suggestion for how a site admin would export a group makes a lot of sense to me. A group admin would also need to be able to export their own group, and perhaps the Share menu is a good place to do it from.

Aaron, you asked about testing HTML export for every blocktype and artefact type. Domi and I can test the ones we have enabled, but if you would like us to test all of them, would you be able to point us to where we can use a Mahara with all enabled?

Happy new year and sorry for the hiatus - it got pretty frantic round here in December.

Best,

Mira