Summer 2023 - Courses
- (OLD ACCOUNT) Erin Nettifee
Document drafted by (OLD ACCOUNT) Erin Nettifee before leaving the FOLIO project in August 2023.
Four github modules are related to Courses
- mod-courses: https://github.com/folio-org/mod-courses
- ui-courses: https://github.com/folio-org/ui-courses
- ui-lti-courses: https://github.com/folio-org/ui-lti-courses
- edge-lti-courses: https://github.com/folio-org/edge-lti-courses
Features desired / related to Courses can be found in jira:
The main epic is UXPROD-791 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Stories and features for Courses are also labeled with the "courses" label: Getting issues...
SME slack channel is #ra-reserves: https://folio-project.slack.com/archives/C9AFFJMM0
Historical info and meeting notes: RA - Reserves (inactive)
Documentation on docs.folio.org: https://docs.folio.org/docs/access/courses/courses/
Product owner history
Courses development began very early on in the project. The first PO was Anya Arnold, and she led a group of SMEs that developed requirements without beginning development due to resource constraints.
The next PO was Kelly Drake, who worked with the Fenway Library Organization (FLO). Simmons College funded development of the first version of the Courses app, done by Index Data.
There has been no PO since Kelly left the project in (Spring 2021?). Erin Nettifee (Duke) and Charlotte Whitt (Index Data) have both helped with keeping basic functionality in place, but have not been able to serve as the full functional product owner.
LTI Module development
The two LTI modules (Ui-lti-courses and edge-lti-courses) are documented within this wiki (Course Reserves - LTI connectivity) as well as within the modules themselves on Github.
LTI stands for Learning Tools Interoperability, and is the industry standard protocol for connecting external tools to learning management systems like Sakai, Moodle or Canvas. The module allows you to create an LTI Tool in the course management system that can connect to FOLIO, look up items on reserve for a specific course, and display them within the course interface. It also supports an integration with Box so that PDF files can be stored in Box and then served to students via a download from Box - allowing for putting PDFs on reserve.
The two modules were built by a developer at Duke University in Winter/Spring 2021 because Duke needed the functionality to use FOLIO Courses in production. This was prior to any formal module acceptance process into the project, so it did not go through a screening or approval process with the PC or Technical Council.
Duke is departing the project but will run FOLIO through Summer 2024. As far as Duke is aware, no libraries besides Duke are using the module currently. Duke has funded fixing security issues with the module, but no further development.
Edge-courses module
There is an edge-courses project module in Jira that was introduced in Summer 2023, but no further detail on that project is known.
SME community
The Courses app has been sheparded by a SME working group, formed under the RA Special Interest Group; it has not been a special interest group in and of itself.
There is a lot of interest from within the community in continuing to develop course reserve functionality beyond the 1.0 version funded by Simmons, but unfortunately, there have not been volunteers to take over as a working group convener, product owner, or to fund further development. The last substantive discussion about Courses and resourcing that Erin is aware of happened in August 2022 at the Product Council: 2022-08-18 Meeting notes