Skip to content

WTCC 4: No option to hide an assignment until a student uses its invite link #415

Description

@Talonness

Which part would this affect?

Assignment templates

Problem or current behavior

Type: Feature request Priority: P3 — Low Part affected: classroom50.org

Once a student is a member of a classroom, the classroom's Assignments page lists every assignment in that classroom, each with its own "Accept assignment" button. We confirmed with a test account that an assignment the student had never been given a link to appeared in the list and was fully acceptable.

The invite link is therefore a convenience for distribution, not an access control. An instructor who creates a term's assignments in advance — which the setup workflow otherwise encourages, since templates are only needed at initial setup — cannot control the order in which students accept them. A student could accept the final capstone assignment in the first week of the course.

Proposed solution

A per-assignment visibility setting — an "unlisted" or "link only" toggle — that keeps an assignment off the student's Assignments page until they open its invite link, after which it appears normally.

Classroom 50 already offers an unlisted-link option when creating a classroom. This is the same concept applied one level down.

Alternatives considered

Scheduled release dates per assignment. Would serve the same purpose and may fit the product better than link-gating. Either outcome would resolve this.

Create each assignment only when its lab opens. This is our current workaround. It is workable for a course with three assignments, and impractical for courses with weekly repositories. It also shifts a setup task into the teaching term and creates a step a successor instructor can forget.

Instruct students to accept only the current assignment. Depends on students reading directions, and provides no signal when they do not.

Additional context

Reproduction:

  1. Create a classroom with two or more assignments.
  2. Share the invite link for only the first assignment with a rostered student.
  3. As that student, open the classroom's Assignments page.
  4. Observe that all assignments are listed, including ones never shared, each with an active Accept button.
  5. Accept one that was never shared; observe that the repository is created normally.

Before submitting

  • I searched existing issues and this is not a duplicate.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

P2Medium — normal backlog priorityUser-reportExternal/pilot user feedback (e.g. WTCC)WebWeb frontend (web/)enhancementNew feature or requestquestionFurther information is requested

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions