Event Scheduling and Workflow
Description/Requirements
A custom content type for lessons. This content type will act as an overall lesson node, which will need to allow for a full workflow from suggestion to teacher sign on to scheduling.
- Must be easy for users to propose lessons and sessions
- a way for people to vote/approve sessions
- a way for teachers to claim sessions (if they didn't propose them)
- a way to compile related materials and resources.
Setup and Workflow
Potential ideas from this issue - http://drupal.org/node/207042 This is a different idea from, but could be closely related to, this issue (http://drupal.org/node/201898) that is about teacher lesson submissions. Much of the "base" info of a lesson could be the same whether it is a suggestion from the public or someone who wishes to teach it. The details can be added by a teacher in that pipeline. So that if it starts life as a plain suggestion, a teacher can pick it up and fill in details saying they want to teach it or a teacher can just create a suggestion and add all the details upon initial submission. This could get sticky and we don't want to confuse people who are just suggesting and have them feel like they have to fill in everything for actual teaching. Anyway, an idea to help steamline things. We would obviously need to really work out the details, UI and workflow.
If we made a CCK content type just right, users could start it's life as a "suggestion", teachers within an different role could add their availability and scheduled dates to the fields that they were allowed to see, and then site admins could approve the node by changing the fields they were allowed to see, such as scheduling the node for a live broadcast date on the calendar, thus allowing users to Signup.module the node!
Potential ideas from this issue - http://drupal.org/node/201898 We need a way for potential teachers to be able to create a node that solicits their idea, difficulty level, dates available to teach, and training topic, and then places the submitted node into a queue for drupaldojo moderators to review.
Once the prospective lesson node is approved, additional admin-only CCK fields (think taxonomy_access or cck_field_perms) are filled in, and the node becomes an Upcoming Lesson, complete with a Calendar entry from the CCK Date.module.
Content types and fields
http://drupalkata.com/drupaldojo/node/334
Resources
- d.o. issue(s) -
- Lesson and project wishlists/suggestions - http://drupal.org/node/207042
- We need nodes for teachers to choose their topic(s) - http://drupal.org/node/201898
- Lesson CCK - http://drupal.org/node/202086
- Lesson pages - what's on 'em? http://drupal.org/node/206931
- Guidelines and ideas for lessons, presentations, workshops, and projects - a compilation of potential topics for lessons, sessions, tasks, projects and collaborative workshops
Use cases and similar solutions
- http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions
- http://barcelona2007.drupalcon.org/schedule
- http://badcamp.net/sessions
- SXSW Panel picker - great ideas on workflow and how to select sessions
Workflow on development site
Aaron has documented the workflow on the development site -
http://dev.drupaldojo.com/blogs/aaron/making-tracks-dojo
What else should we incorporate from the suggestions above?
Session workflow
Per Aaron, this is how the session workflow is currently set up....
You'll notice that (other than the blog), the main content of the site is grouped into Lessons, Tracks, and People. Basically, Lessons are what you saw in the old Dojo: each lesson is a collection of videos, images, pdfs, and/or other files, along with a write-up, on any topic under the Drupal sun. It's easier than ever to add a lesson now: after you create and post a video tutorial on Archive.org (or Blip.TV, YouTube, and soon DimDim), you'll be able to create a lesson and paste the URL to the video on the node submission page.
Tracks are the newest exciting feature for the Dojo: a collection of lessons under a common theme. As with lessons, anyone is welcome to create a track, and mix and match related lessons. They don't even have to be your lessons. Then other users on the Dojo can work their way through your track, marking lessons completed as they do so.
If you haven't yet tested this functionality, please do so and leave your feedback. Cheers!
What about upcoming lessons?
The workflow right now seems to assume that a lesson has happened and there already is a video. How will we handle upcoming sessions? Will anybody be able to schedule a lesson or will there be any sort of admin control of what shows up or is featured on the site?
Think we need to differentiate
I think we need to differentiate between those who produce content/events/lessons and those who submit or recommend. Letting anyone submit other peoples lessons would make it difficult to prevent duplication, spam, or overall quality control. This would be different for those wishing to submit their 'own' lesson, session or event because we could provide specific guidelines and requirements.
A good workaround would be to 'only' allow admins/editors to populate the repository by submitting feeds and/or one off lessons. Users would still be able to create tracks/channels by flagging content already on the site.
This issue is related should be evaluated along with this - http://drupalkata.com/drupaldojo/node/212
Need a consensus
Not sure what we decided on the call, but we need a consensus here. Agreed that we want to let anyone create or submit a lesson, but I think we need to differentiate between the two.
Changed master CCK to session - please review categorization
We've changed the CCK type from 'lesson' to 'session and will use taxonomy to categorize the session type - please review and comment on the categorization.
http://drupalkata.com/drupaldojo/node/356
How are we handling resources and media assets?
I'm checking out the dev site and I'm a bit unclear how we're handling resources and media assets? Currently it seems like videos are a requirement for each lesson or session? What about other media assets such as slideshows, audio, and other resources? Right now there doesn't seem to be a place for these. Any thoughts on what we should do here?
Content type 'resource'?
What if we created a content type 'resource' for assets (vids, podcasts, blogs, links, etc.) that people submit. Then the 'Lesson' node (or whatever we call it) could be for producers of 'Dojo' sessions. That would allow for sessions to be tied to a calendar and resources could be added to each lesson.
Is everything a lesson?
Currently we have all content presented as a lesson - http://dev.drupaldojo.com/lessons
Would it be a good idea to use taxonomy(?) differentiate along the lines of something like this?
If that makes sense, possibly the content type should be something more generic like 'session'.
Set up vocabulary term 'type'
Per our discussions, I set up a vocabulary called 'type' and created the terms listed here - http://drupalkata.com/drupaldojo/node/356;
Please review, advise, or revise
Open Content and Open Learning environment
This post by Bill Fitzgerald provides some great ideas/examples for the workflow we want to achieve. Better yet, the tools, knowledge, workflows are soon to be released as a Knight Funded installation profile. Possibly there are some elements we could integrate as well as some opportunities for collaboration.
Here's a good example of a Drupal repository
Here's a good example of a Drupal repository and why we need to differentiate between Drupal Dojo sessions and those produced by others - http://www.drupalove.com/
Drupal Dojo was/can be a prominent brand - if we're just creating another vid repository, we're missing it.
Should image be a requirement?
The way the cck is set up, image is an optional field. For consistency, it may be best to not allow this field or have some sort of default icon or header that would show up on every post. Thoughts?