Atutor.no

We get a lot of feedback from our users, and a very clear pattern is that the users wish to be notified of different things that happens in the platform that is of relevance to them.

For instance they love the ability to subscribe to forums, announcements, and messages / inbox (allthough they seldom find out how to subscribe to the last one).

They most often say that they want an e-mail when this and that happens, which would be fine, but I don't think that sending all these e-mails is the best solution, neither the one that scales the best.

An activity / notification feed for ATutor

This has led me to think that we need some kind of activity feed or notification feed in ATutor, as popularized by Facebook and their notifications (you need to be logged in to Facebook to see this page), and Basecamps dashboard or project overview.

Here's a recent screenshot of my latest Facebook notifications:

The "items" (like photo / status / user) and "actions" (comments / likes) would be different in ATutor, and that leads to my questions to Atutor users and developers:

• What are the items and actions in Atutor that should be included in such a stream?
• How could we technically and design-wise implement this in ATutor?

We are hiring again, and will thus have two developers available to work on ATutor in the not-so-distant future, and this is one of the things we wish to prioritize. We're willing to do all of this work, get it into core and maintain it, given that we and ATRC agree on how it should be done. And yes, we know that this is a massive task!

Here's my initial thoughts on the two points above, please add your comments in the comment field!

Items and actions in ATutor

First, there are different items and actions depending on your status. Regular students need to see some things, while assistants needs to see other things, depending on their priviledge. The colored things in brackets are links and / or generic terms, comments in italic.

For normal students:

For the communication tools

• You got a [new message] from [user] (inbox)
• [User] wrote [new post title] in [forum name]
• [User] replied to [post title] in [forum title]
• [announcement title] was posted in [course name]
• [user] wrote [blog post title] in [blog title]
• [user] commented on [blog post title] in [blog title]
• [user] uploaded [file name] in file storage.
• [user] uploaded a revision of [file name] in file storage
• [user] commented on [file name] in file storage

For tests and assignments

• test [test name] is now available.
• test [test name] closes in 3 (?) days
• assignment [assignment name] closes in 3 (?) days
• [certificate name] is ready for download (our module, not yet released)

For content

• [content title] is now available (given that a release date is set)
• [forum title] was added (when creating a brand new forum)
• new [poll name] is relased
• [FAQ] is updated with [FAQ question]
• [Links] are updated with [link title]
• [Reading list] is updated with [resource name]

For courses

• [course name] is available (given release date is set)
• [course name] closes in 7 days (given end date is set)

In addition we will need some feed items that are specific for instructors or assistants with a given privilege, like:

• [user] requested enrollment in [course name]
• [user] answered [test title]
• [user] submittet [assignment title]

I have probably forgotten some as well.

How to implement it technically and design-wise

This is the hard part, and I basically have no idea what the best way to start would be. Initially I'm thinking that each module or core function that needs to feed into this notification stream should publish it's own customized RSS file, and that the notification stream function should read and process / sort these after some rules. Some things most of the RSS feeds would need are:

• Date (always needed for sorting)
• Item (announcement title, blog post title, forum title, forum post title etc.)
• Item link (the URL to the item)
• User name (if needed in the stream)
• Action type (like "commented" or "posted" / "wrote" or "submitted" or "requested" or "uploaded" etc)
• Course name
• More?

The placement is pretty much a given I think, this fits perfectly on a slightly redesigned user start page. Not in it's own sub page though, as I want it up front! We may want to add a feature for admins to turn this off and on.

I also belive the items should be sorted by date, with the most recent items on top. Alternatively it could be sorted by course name, then date.

And I believe we should have a cap on it, so you would at the most see the 20 / 30 / 50 (?) latest items.

Another important thing to think about is how we create the translation terms, as there are many different ways to write messages like this in different languages.

New modules would have to be able to use this so we would need to describe how they can. This should be a part of the module documentation.

How it fits in with the original user feedback

As I started with, our users crave notifications, and they also want them by e-mail. I don't think we should remove the e-mail notifications that are allready in place in ATutor, but you should also be able to get the notification stream in e-mail, I think LinkedIn does this really well:

The user would need the ability to set when this should be sent, like for instance:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Biweekly

Random other thoughts

First of all, ATutor just implemented the Open Social framework as a module. As far as I know it's also the first open source application that has done this - kudos for that!

I don't know the Open Social specs very well, but if this specification can be used to create the other feeds we need that would be really nice! Also, the ATutor Social module allready has an activity feed, and this is a feed I typically would like to include in a more general and site-wide feed.

So, comments are open! What would it take to implement this? What is a realistic time range to get it implemented? What have I missed? Or am I on the wrong track alltogether? :)

Keeping track of comments can be hard, but in Drupal world there's a module for everything, and I just added two of them to this site!

Now you can subscribe to comments on specific posts by e-mail, by checking a box below the comment field on any page.

Personally I prefer RSS, and have added a comment RSS module as well. You can subscribe to all comments on atutor.no with this URL:

http://atutor.no/crss/

..or you can get comment RSS for specific posts - these are autodiscovered when wieving a post, and you'll find the subscribe icon in your browsers address bar, if using a proper browser.

Happy commenting!

Some time ago we added a small modification to the forum listings in ATutor, which adds a small visual cue to whether you are subscribed to a forum or not.

It's best explained by example. This is the way forums look by default:

While you see the "Subscribe" / "Unsubscribe" text, it's not very easy to see which you are subscribed to and which not at a glance.

Our modification changes this listing to:

..so there's a small envelope showing if you are not subscribed, and a stop sign if you are. It's a detail, but has proved to be quite useful - have a look at our demo server! (note: you have to be registered and enrolled to see it).

Today I made this as a patch so yo can add it yourself. The patch changes the forum/list.php and adds the two small icons to the same folder.