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Multiple Theoretical Questions



  • 2009-01-08 11:12:23

    Multiple Theoretical Questions

    Hi Everyone,

    I'm beginning a new project, and need to know if ATutor can provide all the features I will need before I get too deep into it.
    I am not a coder, so I am unable to do anything that involves a lot of code changes or creation. So even though things might be possible in theory, I'm more interested in whether a beginner (like myself) can actually implement them.

    1) Can I create users without having their e-mail address, or with multiples of the same email address?
    Some people using this will be older and not have email addresses. The way around this would be to send all the email to one address (such as a teacher's assistant who would then hand them out), although that seems to not to be possible. Also, without their email, there is nowhere for their password to be delivered.

    2) Initially, I will have 1 course. I will have several different classes taking this course. I would like to assign a teacher's assistant to each class (group), who can enroll their own students. I don't want the teacher's assistants to be able to see any other classes' students or information. It seems like now if I give an assistant the priveledge to enroll students, they can see all the students enrolled. Is there an easy way around this?

    3) The students in this course will have next to no computer knowledge. No email address, very basic understanding of how to even use the program. So i need to make the system as brutally simple as i can, while still recording the users information (name, company, user ID, date, etc). These people won't be able to edit a profile or anything like that to enter their information. Has anyone done any projects like this before, and can maybe offer up some advice on how to approach it?

    Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer up any suggestions or tips. The support here is great.


  • 2009-01-08 11:54:43

    Re: Multiple Theoretical Questions

    1. ATutor, and most other similar systems, are not intended to be used without an email address. You could possibly create fake email addresses for users, but that would mean they would not receive notices when forum posts are made, or a class announcement is sent, or they could not change their password etc. etc.

    2. You're probably better off creating multiple copies of the course, rather than groups within a single course, if you want to hide student information from assistants.

    3. Using the Course Tools manager, you can turn on/off just about everything, and simplify the environment to a just a few tools.


  • 2009-01-08 12:21:58

    Re: Multiple Theoretical Questions

    Thanks for the quick reply....

    When i tested with fake email addresses i found the main problem was that it was mailing my password to the fake address, and i was stuck without a password. Is there a way to set up a system where i can assign names and passwords and just hand them out to students, rather then send a bunch of fake emails and trying to compile them?


  • 2009-01-08 13:03:42

    Re: Multiple Theoretical Questions

    That will be a problem.

    When accounts are generated by an instructor using the enrollment manager to register students, login names and password use the same string, and users are asked to change their password. So you could potentially pass them out one by one as login "j_doe" and pass "j_doe" but there would be no way for users to reset their passwords without an email address.

    I suppose then there is no easy way to use the system without email addresses.

    Since virtually all system work this way, my suggestion is to rethink your strategy, perhaps have a local administrator setup email accounts for each user, or have users create a hotmail or gmail account etc. First steps might be to create a "howto" document on how to setup an email account.


  • 2009-01-08 13:11:49

    Re: Multiple Theoretical Questions

    Thanks for your help.

    I will have to ponder on this one...