[WWdevel] Instructors and students in the admin course.

[Michael G. <ga...@ma...>]

Hi everyone,

I'd appreciate comments on the following ideas I have for modifying  
the admin course (CourseAdmin.pm Module).

  Since I run hosted.webwork.rochester.edu
I am frequently setting up new courses for folks and then archiving  
them at the end of the semester.  I have a log file
of all of the courses I add, but I need to process that (tracking  
insertions and deletions) in order to get a mailing list for
those currently using the course.  My suggested changes would make it  
easier to email the people responsible for active courses on the server.

The classlist of the admin course is currently not being used for  
much, except to store the names and passwords of those allowed to  
setup new courses on the server.  These folks are all "professors" in  
the admin course.  By default they are all transferred to any new  
courses created as "professors" so that they can help with any  
problems that arise.

When a new course is created I would like to add the new instructor  
for the new course as a "student" in the admin course.
Students in admin would not be transferred to new courses that are  
created.  By looking at the list of students in admin I would have an  
automatic way to send email to all "students", i.e. instructors for  
existing courses on the server.

When a course is dropped the instructor of that course would be  
dropped as a "student" in the admin course.  This means there would  
still be a record of the instructor in the course, but they would not  
be active and would not normally receive e-mail.

Since one person might be an instructor for several courses, I would  
use  courseName_userID  as the student id in the admin course, so      
UR_mth161_gage  and UR_mth162_gage would be separate students.  I  
could also use the comments field to store additional information.  
(or perhaps gage_mth161 and gage_mth162 would be better)

I'd appreciate comments or suggestions.  I realize that others may  
use the CourseAdmin somewhat differently so let me know if this would  
interfere (or help) with your own use of CourseAdmin.   It's  
certainly true that I can write a script to massage the log file and  
obtain current information about the state of the server, but using  
the email system that is already set up for the course appeals to me.

Take care,

Mike