The TA assignment module of the Instructional Support application allows staff responsible for TA assignments to assign TAs to courses and release the information to course staff and TAs at a designated time. This page provides a few notes to help with understanding how the system works.
Database Schema
All TA-management-related information is stored in tables whose names begin with ta_. There are also several views and stored procedures similarly named.
User Interface
User interface code is in the Python module uw.local.teaching.webui.ta. This code implements the user interface for staff to view and edit the TA assignments. Additionally, the main page for each offering in the main Instructional Support application displays the TA assignments for that offering, and provides a way to download a .csv of the same information. This is implemented in uw.local.teaching.webui.offering.
Current Limitations
This part of the system is not fully implemented.
The data model for TA management anticipates that multiple units could use the system to assign TAs. However, at present, some parts of the user interface are hard-coded to use “CS” as the unit code. As a result, only CS can use it. Some thought would need to go into how the user interface should work with multiple units using it; also, it would be wise to consider whether breaking up TA assignments by unit is correct. It could be that multiple offices within a unit could be responsible for assigning TAs to the same or different courses. This suggests that admin units as used for examination management would be the right way to organize TA management as well.
Permissions to edit the TA assignments and to view them before general release to course staff need to be handed out per unit. At present, the application itself does not do any authorization checking. In order to provide security, the relevant URLs must be protected in the Web server configuration.
Multiple roles should be available but currently are not. At a minimum, it should be possible to allow some people to see the TA assignments as they are developed without allowing those people to edit them.