I have been working for a day now on a discipline module for Drupal. Basically it allows an administrator to enter demeritis/merits to certain users (student role). I just wanted to get some of your input about it. I started working on it because I had noticed that it had been proposed along with the gradebook module and as far as I can tell, this has not yet been developed. If this has been developed please steer me in the right direction to find the module.
If I were to finish the module do you guys think that it should go up as a contributed module? The only reason I am going to finish it is for the school that I teach at. They are looking at changing their backend management system and I would like to give Drupal a fair showing. I already have limited functionality, but I just wanted to get your guys input about making it available for everyone.
Comments
Flag Module
Could this be done with Flag module (http://drupal.org/project/flag)? I'm not sure if you can easily enter multiple flags for a single user though.
Mark W. Jarrell
Manager of Web Services
Jones Knowledge Integration Group, Inc.
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Mark W. Jarrell
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Richland Library
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That would be great except I
That would be great except I don't think that administrative users would understand why they are inputting flags instead of demerits/merits. Also, I don't think you can set an amount for one of the flags. Each demerit/merit can be a variable integer amount. Maybe this could be done through CCK but that would not be very modular. I want to make something that someone else could take and plug straight into their site without any crazy configurations.
Google Summer of Code 2009?
This sounds like a great candidate for a Summer of Code Project- any interest in cross-posting it there? If it got picked up and mentored you could expect it to be functional by the end of August- and you'd be helping to grow the Drupal community, as well as help Drupal financially (Google gives $500 to the OSS project for every successful project)
So what do you say?
http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2009
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
I wouldn't mind posting it
I wouldn't mind posting it over there, but I think I will have something completely functional in the coming weeks. I was just curious as to whether anyone thinks that the community could use a module like that. It's really just one small part of a greater school management system that can be made with Drupal.
A little more info
jdwfly, Can you say a little more about how this would be used? Are the merits/demerits based on user posts ? What would the interface look like for the teacher / student? Would they somehow factor into a student's grade in a class? If so, then integration with the gradebook module might be interesting. Perhaps something like a gradebook category (taxonomy term), with a merits "assignment" and some code to tally up the users merits and demerits and include it in the gradebook calculation? I could be way of on your intentions, but it sounds interesting! I would be happy to assist with the integration if this is of interest to you.
Description
In short it allows for an administrative user to input merits/demerits for a student. These can be viewed by the student or parent through their login on the user page.
It wouldn't necessarily be a grade though, although I believe there are some schools that might incorporate this into their grades. At our school (K5-12th) we use this type of discipline system and track it using our current web-based (Custom-rolled Java) solution. The kids will receive a demerit for certain reasons that are listed in their student handbook. They can receive a merit for doing something helpful that's out of the ordinary. At every time they accumulate 5 demerits they receive a detention, and at 25 a suspension, and if they keep going they will be expelled.
Our backend also does grades, report cards, etc. Your gradebook module is very nice and when coupled with og_gradebook it is very easy to set up classes. In order for me to show my school that they could use this I would need to have this discipline module.
Did an attendance module ever get made to go along with gradebook? I haven't been able to find any info regarding that. I wouldn't mind working to make that happen either, because we would need that as well.
Thanks, that helps.
I assume you are storing the history of a student's merits and demerits, with dates, descriptions of each event and probably the name of the person who issued it? And providing pages to view, edit, and export/print the history as well? All this could be done with CCK and Views, but as you mentioned, modules have advantages as well. Providing tables with known and fixed structures certainly makes it easier to integrate with other modules. You can also provide views integration to permit customized displays. If you are inclined to maintain it, or can find someone who will, I think it makes sense to make it contrib.
The current gradebook module doesn't have an attendance module, or a roster module, but it will not be difficult to develop these submodules. I've started a task on the gradebook issue queue to get ideas for the roster module. You could do the same, explaining what features/interface you would like to see in an attendance module.
Status so far
I knew it could easily be done with CCK and Views, but I wanted to see if anyone else would want or need this type of module. I think it looks like there would be some interest in it, so I will continue to develop what I have so far.
Currently, I have developed the custom node type and I am working on integrating it with views. It is like you said, a table with: dates, description, amount, action taken, and the issuer. I want to integrate the viewing of a user's discipline with the user page and a view. After that I will work on the exporting and printing functionality.
What should I do with it when I think that it is developed to the point where the Drupal community should start testing it?
Apply for CVS access at d.o.
The handbook pages http://drupal.org/node/7765 will help.
What happened to this?
Did this module ever get developed? I have need for something like this. My site is for tracking demerits/merits only. I'm currently having issues getting views to show the total number of demerits for a number of different students at the same time. For example: I want to see all 9th grade students and their total number of demerits(per student) in one table. Not just the total number of demerits for 9th grade or a list of every demerit every 9th grader received.