The Technical Working Group, which has representation from around the University, has been busy discussing the idea of “roles” – teacher, student, admin, guest, and so on. The underlying software has a long list of features, which can be turned on or off depending on the specific role. The TWG has been reviewing the use cases, and defining the roles by which features are on or off. One of the challenges is relational features (turning on one feature turns on another – they are linked), so the team wants to be careful to avoiding unintended consequences. Another challenge is making sure we don’t create too many different roles that are very similar in functionality, because that makes it much harder to manage.

The TWG hopes to complete this phase of the work in the next few weeks.