E-mailThe following are designed to show a workflow and how different use cases can potentially be met in a unified UI. They are by no means complete (work needed on visual design, element placement and choice, textual content, and more); if they appear "polished" its only because of all the great pieces and paradigms I re-used (sometimes carelessly) from Nathan's work.
1) Instructor, with the goal of creating Project groups, first comes to Groups tab:
Notes
- Some instructors may not want to create groups themselves, but set options so that students can create their own groups. Could be elements on this page to allow them to do this, or a "Group Options for this Site" button/link that shows Options screen.
2) Instructor then clicks Create New Group(s) and the following appears:
Notes:
- obviously the icons used above are not right (just copied them from site creation lightbox)
- would be good to do some user testing to get a better handle on how users think of, categorize, and label the different types of grouping methods.
3) Instructor chooses Manual Placement, so will next define the groups on this screen (shown mid-way through completion):
Notes:
- Initial state of this screen would have Group Type set to something like "Generic group(s)" or "Ad hoc group(s)", and would have only one editable field in which to enter a group name, with no "Remove" link. This allows for a fairly straightforward means of accomplishing the use case of "I want to just create one group".
- Group Type dropdown could have a variety of group types (institutionally configured), including official ones such as "lab sections" and "discussion sections" (replicating Section Info "Add sections" functionality when set to manually manage), as well as less official but commonly understood types such as "project groups" and "study groups". All would have default settings (again institutionally configured), making them template-like; if user changes any of the default settings, could allow them to save those as a new group type definition (e.g. "My project groups".)
- Edit link shows screen (see 10 group_set_details.pngfor example of what this might look like) where user can refine the rules and options for this set of groups (e.g. no greater than x in any group, students can be in only one of this set of groups), if the default settings for the type don't match their needs. (Hopefully defaults will be good enough in most cases.)
4) The Groups tab shows the new groups:
Notes:
- Checkboxes in left-most column currently have no purpose, but perhaps they might...
- Clicking group name (2nd column) shows editable details for the group (can change name and other group-specific values such as meeting times and locations, if relevant). See 11 group_details.png for vague idea of what this might look like.
- Edit Details button allows user to change options for all the groups listed (e.g. change them so that students can join groups, or can only be in one group at a time). See 10 group_set_details.pngfor an idea of what this might look like.
- Should details be listed out near the Edit Details buttons? (more info readily available, but more clutter). Or perhaps show/hide details link?
5) Next, instructor clicks the Assign Members Link, and assigns members:
Notes:
- I envision a Netflix-like ability to mouseover members and get more information about them (to help instructor as he/she is trying to decide who should be placed where)
- I acknowledge that instead of scrolling members list, may have to switch to paging (less desirable)
- Filtering mechanism (now labeled "Change/Filter" should allow user to show only those of a certain role, only those not assigned to any of the groups in question, or perhaps only those assigned to a particular group in another set (e.g. I only want to see students in my 9 a.m. lecture right now)
6) Now the Groups tab shows non-zero numbers for Current Size, and allows user to show the members that have been assigned:
Notes:
- Not sure of correct mechanism for showing the group members. Have table expand to show members in the row for that group? (This would potentially allow for user to be able to show members of more than one group at a time, though would be unwieldy for all but small groups.) Or have list of members show in overlay? Or go to another page?
7) Later, the instructor decides to create groups defined by the official sections for the course, so clicks Add New Groups again, and sees a slightly different UI for starting the process:
Notes:
- Above screen needs to be updated so grouping options match the ones shown earlier.
- Alternative approach to what's shown above: move the question about whether to add to existing set of groups to next screen (would only be relevant if they picked the same type of grouping method).
8) After indicating that groups this time will be based on external membership, instructor sees a screen in which can choose the type of external membership and pick the specific groups (shown here after making selections):
Notes:
- Really need to focus on the right wording to talk about what's going on here: I've used a variety, because I couldn't decide: "based on" another membership, "imported" from another membership, "synchronized with" another membership....
- It's an open question as to whether sections for which rosters have already been added should automatically have groups created. My gut is that if user is adding the rosters for these, that more often than not, they'd want to be able treat them as groups. Perhaps in the case where more than one roster is added to a site, user can be asked if they want to create groups? If we do automatically create the groups, needs to be an easy way for user to delete them (i.e. to delete the set of groups).
- Above screen is part of a scenario that assumes that no rosters have been added, and thus no members are already in the site; creating these groups (synchronizing this site with these external memberships) necessarily adds the students as members to the site. (If on the other hand, the students were already members of this site, e.g. in the case where the roster for lecture section had been previously added, no new members would be added to the site.)
- In the case where the site has already been identified as being connected to a particular course (perhaps via roster association), the semester and course dropdowns should default to those for that course.
- When a Section type is selected, automatically select all sections of that type, to meet the use case of instructor wanting groups for all sections of that type. The less common use case of wanting to create groups for a subset of the sections (e.g. a T.A. teaching only 2 sections) is met by user manually selecting the groups. (Although institutional restrictions might require that only the sections the T.A. is teaching are listed in the first place.)
- Variations of this screen: "Groups in another site", "Other external groups available to me"
9) Now there are multiple sets of groups (mockup actually shows an additional set of groups, Study Groups, too):
Notes:
- Additional columns show here (as compared with Project Groups) based on the "rules" for this set of groups.
- If we're going to give the user the ability to show "All" groups (across sets), need to figure out which columns to show (only those in common? all columns possible, leaving irrelevant ones blank for those group sets for which the column doesn't apply? user-defined?)
- Create Set link would function pretty much the same as "Create New Group(s)" button, so not sure it's needed.