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Approach:
Given how this practice relates heavily to administrative decisions made at each country or particular University and at the same time requires modifications in core platform processes that can’t be modified by extension alone, we have identified that a small list of modification to the existing Teams feature we can build a flexible grouping system without having to make custom models or business logic that can’t be reused.
Proposed Solution
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A recap of the existing teams functionality
as part of the course configuration, course authors can enable the Teams feature in a course, and then create one or more “Groups“, or “Team sets“. Inside this team sets, there will be teams that learners can join.
you can Set a Group in 3 different ways:
Open (Learners can create, join, leave, and see other teams)
Public managed (Only course staff can control teams and memberships. Learners can see other teams.)
Private managed (Only course staff can control teams, memberships, and see other teams)
Course authors also get a fair share of management capabilities for the teams and their memberships through the course authoring MFE, being able to upload a csv file to create or change team members, and also unenroll learners from the team manually, etc.
Once learners are members of a team, this has 2 main effects:
Team members can engage into a private async discussion
ORA activities can be configured to be “team work“ so that only one member of the team needs to submit on behalf of the group and they all get the same grade after the assessment.
Proposed enhancements
This proposed solution includes three key modifications to the current Teams functionality:
Allow course authors to create content that is only available for members of a Team. This capability is already present in the other form of student grouping, namely cohorts. More details here: Connecting Teams to Content Groups
Include a new mode for type of Team Groups (also called topics or team-sets) that would allows learners to openly see, join or leave teams, but leaves team creation to the course staff. More details here: Open Managed Group Type
Add a group teaching assistant role or access rule (different from the existing Group Community TA) to the courses such that a TA assigned to a Team can "Manage Grades" for the students that are members of said Team. Group Teaching Assistant Role
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