Contrib: Conditional Release

January 2010

Conditional Release is in QA and has been slated for release with Sakai 2.7. It is now available in Sakai's trunk code and the 2.7.x branch.

Incubation to Release (Updated 2010-01-26)

Status	Item	Notes
	Project is being tracked in the Management/Project Coordination space	here
	Project has institutional sponsor	Currently Rutgers and Georgia Tech
	Code is in production	Currently Georgia Tech
	Project has a documentation home
	Project has a source code home	kernel content gradebook
	Status is published	This is it.
	Use cases are spelled out	See use cases below.
	Use Case: Instructor can apply conditions to resources on the basis of events from the Gradebook	This works now.
	Use Case: Sakai Developer can create new consumer and/or producer of conditions	Producers have yet to be broadcast to consumers.
	Use Case: Site participants receive notifications when their resource becomes available	Currently, participants will receive notification too soon, or not at all
	Use Case: Sakai Administrator can opt in or out of Conditional Release	conditions.service.enabled=true
	Code has automated tests	a few rudimentary tests are part of the build
	Project has written QA test cases	In progress: CR Testing Guide
	Project known-issues are in JIRA	http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/CR
	Project has no unresolved blocker or critical issues
	Project has an owner for post-release issues	Aeroplane Software will donate the necessary hours
	Service APIs have JavaDocs	http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/KNL-336
	Project has release-ready executive summary
	Project has release-ready admin guide
	Project has release-ready developer guide
	Project has release-ready help files

Description of Conditional Release

Conditional Release is a feature being considered for inclusion in Sakai 2.7 which allows a worksite maintainer to specify a condition that must be met for some piece of content to be shown ("released") to other users, typically students. This image shows setting a condition in the Resources tool:

Use Cases

Instructor Can Apply Conditions to Resources on the Basis of Events from the Gradebook

The original motivating use case for Conditional Release is the ability to have resources (files, folders, etc.) become visible to students only after some Gradebook condition has been met (e.g., their grade on a particular assignment is a above or below a specified threshold).

The instructor will be able to apply conditions to a site resource in the same way that dates of availability are applied (since Sakai 2.5): the Edit Details panel of any resource will have a section for assigning a condition from the Gradebook that must be met on a student-by-student basis before the resource will be visible to the student.

The instructor will be required to select a Gradebook item from a drop-down list. All the current Gradebook items for the site will be displayed in the list.

The following Gradebook events will serve as the basis for conditional release of resources:

due date has passed
due date has not passed
has been released to students
has not been released to students
is included in course grade
is not included in course grade
grade is less than (some number)
grade is greater than or equal to (some number)

Sakai Developer Can Create new Consumers and Producers of Conditions

Once the Conditions infrastructure is in Sakai, it should be possible for a tool or service developer to create new condition consumers and producers.

Condition Producer: a service can become a condition producer by advertising to the rest of the system the information that it makes available. The Gradebook, for example, produces information about whether a particular item has been graded, and what the score is. This information can become the basis for a condition.

Condition Consumer: a service that makes sets up new conditions and responds in some way when the condition has been met. The Resources tool is a condition consumer that makes inquiries of the Gradebook (the producer), and when the condition has been met for a particular user, switches on availability of that resource for that user.

As an example of something that a developer might do, an Evaluation service could be a condition producer, sending notifications when a user completes an evaluation. A tool such as the Gradebook could consume these conditions, and only display a term grade if the student has completed an evaluation.

Sakai Administrator Can Opt In or Out of Conditional Release

As with dates of availability, conditional release will be disabled by default, so that institutions that aren't interested in it won't have to do anything to turn it off. A property in sakai.properties will be available to activate the conditions service and any condition producers or consumers will check the property before performing any conditions-related operations.

Site Participants Receive Notifications When Their Resource Becomes Available

The Resources tool allows site maintainers to send email notification at the time a resource is added, or when it enters its period of availability. The notifications should be sensitive to conditional release, and if configured to notify, should send the notification on a case-by-case basis, only when the resource becomes available.