7.0 SR-1: Possible Bug in Courses Tool

Mark Barnes said:

When looking at a new Course in the tool, you get a helpful list of requirements for the Course. However, that list disappears once you start the Course.

Mark,

I think this is due to a terminology error - the Courses tool does not differentiate plan templates (your BEFORE screenshot) from actual plans (your AFTER screenshot). "Starting" a course will generate a plan instance from the template - the template however will be still available with all the info, and you can have multiple instances - say: with different reading plans - of one such plan template.

Since this inflates the count numbers on plans I was short of reporting it as a bug:

Damian McGrath said:

Mark Barnes said:

that list disappears once you start the Course. Sometimes it's useful to check back to the requirements, even after you've started

Bug or not.

I would like to be able to revisit course requirements.

Damian,

but you can! If you look into the "available" section of the course plans, it is still there. That's why I'd prefer to call those 'plan templates' what you see in the lower part of my screenshot / the BEFORE part of Mark's. Only that it's not "before" since it is still there! Starting a plan - which you can do as often as you like - will only generate a new plan instance (increasing the number of existing plans by one), but will not take away the template in any form. Do you see something different? 

PetahChristian said:

NB.Mick said:

but you can! If you look into the "available" section of the course plans, it is still there. That's why I'd prefer to call those 'plan templates' what you see in the lower part of my screenshot / the BEFORE part of Mark's. Only that it's not "before" since it is still there! Starting a plan - which you can do as often as you like - will only generate a new plan instance (increasing the number of existing plans by one), but will not take away the template in any form. Do you see something different? 

Got to say that wasn't obvious that we needed to open the available course (instead of the plan instance) to see the requirements again.

I don't disagree with you - if the UI design confuses Mr Mark Barnes, it sure merits some additional thinking (and the differentiation between template and instance is my private explanation to myself, don't recall if it ever was explained officially like this).

PetahChristian said:

Why not show the course requirements in the plan instance too? Besides being intuitive, it's certainly quicker to open the instance rather than having to first search for the available course, to see its requirements again.

I think it is logical (once I think template vs instance) where the requirements are now - IMO it would help a lot more if we could have a filter facet for "started"/"available" (and thus could bring clarity into the numbers as well).

As others have commented, the UI for the All-Plans Info is lacking a library- list-like view - this could then potentially be filtered (author, last accessed, % of resources licensed etc...). I personally don't understand why the couses tool - at least when viewing the template and instances - can't be opened more than once.