cashaffer
commented
1 week ago A sub-issue that adds to the confusion is that users can create variations on a configuration, and the same name appears again on the list (with a date change). This makes it hard for users to pick the configuration that they want.
When an instructor is trying to create a new course using the form at https://opendsa-server.cs.vt.edu/course_offerings/new, the Book Instance pulldown menu offers a list of all the templates currently in the system. Note that many instructors create one or more templates when they create a course using the https://opendsa-server.cs.vt.edu/configurations/book page. So users of the course_offerings/new page are overwhelmed with choices. This needs to be filtered somehow, or filterable under user control. Things to filter on might reasonably be templates belonging to that user and templates associated with their institution. Ideally, a keyword search could also be provided. There could also be a curated list of "official" templates that we maintain that could be filtered on.
Note that somewhat similar issues happen on the course_offerings/new. I think that the "select reference configuration" field shows the same unfiltered list. The "select your configuration" field seems to be a filtered version of this list, though I am not certain what the filtering criteria might be. It is confusing the way these choices are laid out. It would be clearer if the choices were to pick an existing configuration (that can be explicitly filtered from the full list) vs. uploading a file.