[Phpgroupware-developers] RFC Head Features - Elearning

[Alex Borges]

Okay..... here at the group weve been thinking about how to do the
elearning trick with phpgroupware.

Whats been the development so far:


a) We needed a stronger contacts backend, that supported contact <->
account hard one-one links, so that we can make very comprehensive
management facilities (you can now potentially browse and control your
users through contact categories, organizations...etc.).

b) We need stuff that is not in other (generally proprietary) elearning
systems because, in general, they suck and dislike actually doing
anything usefull for the alumnii.

We are thinking about this:

We want administrators to be able to group data from any application
into generic categories. Hell, we want that at the api level. This would
permit stuff like a general tree based administration facility that just
permits you to generate global categories and generally import/export
data from most apps. 

For that matter weve call this categories, in the tradition of the great
zen masters (ealds idea), tracendental categories (OOOM).

The point is this. If we have tracendental categories and we can have
acl's for them (we can choose the users/groups that can see them in
their apps), and we can choose in which applications where the TC will
show, we can have a generic templating system for easy building of
collaboration scenarios. In our particular case, the environment is
elearning.

To complete this system, this tracendental categories should have a
match 1-1 relationship with hard groups, so that we can also map the
group's acl to the category (if user is in group A, then he can access
trac. category A as per category acl, but the DATA inside category A, is
accesible and OWNED by group A)

For example, administrator creates Tcategory Courses, and Tsubcategory
CS-I, he then chooses all the contacts/accounts that 'belong' and 'can
access' that tc. In that second, all alumni in group CS-I can see in all
their apps they have access to a Category Curses/CS-I. If they go into
contacts, they can choose it and the kids and teachers of CS-I will
appear in their addressbook. Same goes for calendar or infolog.

Now, teacher wants to give homework, he enters a nice wizard, he says,
kids in CS-I should read this pdf, and they need to deliver an essay the
12 of october. In that split second, Tsubcategory CS-I/Homeworks is
created, kids can see the pdf (in the end, category smart) under the
CS-I category, they can go into their calendar and under the
CS-I/Homeworks Tsubcat they will see the date when their hw is due. But
this new Tsubcategory will have no entry in contacts.

This is an elearning scenario, but im shure you guys can think about
your own stuff and your own scenarios.

Okay, here is another feature. Kid has to do homework for CS-I, but its
a teamwork assignment (in some schools, team solving is forcefull
-alas...im a little geek and i went to one of those...sigh). So, they
want to invite some friends to solve the homework with him. They get
together in the classroom and designate him (typical, the geek gets all
the work) 'Hey bro, you make the team in gw and set the date for Oct 11'
(late night programming homework).

So, in the geek (or anyone, it does not REQUIRE a geek) goes in, clicks
on 'new team for CS-I/Homeworks' A contacts ui (the js addressbook
perhaps) pops up, he chooses his buddies, clikcs on done and that
operation generates an entry in the accounts table, type 'T' (Team, this
is mostly skwashd idea, nag him), who owns and has access to a new
Tsubcategory, called CS-I/Homeworks/Name of team and it ONLY appears for
the team memebers (Facilities for rejecting the joining of a team should
be provided as well), the user can now click on new assignment which is
a wizard that sets a calendar entry with a possible infologentry (for
attaching files), select his team, name of homework, files to associate,
and clicks on Done, immediatly, calendar will send emails to his team,
all team members will have the corresponding calendar entry, under the
category CS-I/Homeworks/Team I.

Optionally, the teacher can allways be a part of any team, so he could
check the progress of EVERYTHING (Big Brother Mode).

So, to sum it up. New features:

1.- Tracendental categories
2.- ACL's that can separate which categories are viewable by whom
3.- TC <-> Group link that can ansure us that we can use the group acl
to control access in the TC data.
4.- Teams, which, plus 4 , ensures us user teaming capabilities.

We want to develop this elearning suite as a phpgroupware GPL
application and we would like to involve whomever is interested in it.
Please comment, throw ideas arroung, laugh...whatever...



Lex
Step One Group