LON-CAPA Help

A domain configuration can be used to determine which users in the domain may request creation of: (a) official courses, (b) unofficial courses, (c) communities, or (d) textbook courses within the domain.

The default is for no course or community requests by any domain users.

Communities are similar to courses except the Coordinator may only browse areas of the shared LON-CAPA repository for which he/she has an author or co-author role. Textbook courses use a simplified (1 page) request form, in which the options include cloning of available pre-fabricated textbook courses or template courses, and also other courses in the requester's domain for which the requester has cloning rights, as well as the requester's own existing courses.

Course/Community requests may be set to be processed automatically, queued for approval by a Domain Coordinator, or (for official courses, for example) validated against institutional instructor of record data. The "With validation" option is only displayed if the crsreq_checks() subroutine in localenroll.pm has been customized to indicate that a particular course type can be validated if the owner belongs to a specific institutional group (e.g., Faculty).

The crsreq_checks() routine is closely tied to validate_crsreq(). "With validation" should not be a possible choice in the domain configuration menu for a particular course type and institutional affiliation, unless corresponding validation code has been implemented in validate_crsreq().

LON-CAPA can be configured to send messages to Domain Coordinators to notify them when a course has been requested and queued pending approval. Recipients of such messages are selected from users with an active Domain Coordinator role for the domain. These same users will also receive messages when a course request has been approved by a Domain Coordinator.

LON-CAPA messages are sent to course requestors when a queued course is approved, or an official course which had been queued pending validation of instructor status, is created when validation occurs.

The course request settings for each course type may be different for the various affiliations defined for the institution (e.g., Faculty, Staff etc.). In addition, settings may be defined for users with "advanced" roles in LON-CAPA (i.e., users with author, co-author, coordinator, instructor or administrator roles) which will override the course request settings based on affiliation.

The "default" settings which apply to a particular user based on domain configuration, may be overridden for that specific user, by a Domain Coordinator in the user's domain. The "Add/Modify a User" page for a user includes a section where custom settings can be selected for requests for creation of Courses/Communities in the domain.

An individual user may still be able to request courses or communities, even if settings preclude that in the user's home domain. Domain Coordinators displaying the "Add/Modify a User" page for an existing user from a different domain will see a section where custom settings can be selected to allow requests for creation of Courses/Communities in the domain for which Domain Coordination is being carried out.

Details of pre-fabricated courses: "textbooks" and "templates" for cloning when creating a new "textbook" course can be uploaded (subject, title, image, author, publisher, and LON-CAPA course domain/ID).

Validation of unofficial and textbook courses, and communities can be via a validating server/script Form fields to send to the validator can be specified by customizing the &crsreq_updates() subroutine in localenroll.pm.