Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Notebook error, please wait for the teacher to compelte the contents of this activity.

By: Dave Bauer

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I get the same behavior on a Noticeboard activity int he same sequence.

Noone is editing this sequence.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Dave,

You get the "Please wait for the teacher to complete the contents of this activity" when that specific activity is set to "Define later" in Authoring. This feature allows a teacher to change the activity content whilst the lesson is running. If the students get to the activity, *before* the teacher has edited the activity content thru Monitor, then they get this message.

All you've gotta do is go to that activity in Monitor, edit the activity and press on save. Once that is save, the students are good to go.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Thanks, I thought that was the case, but I tried that to no effect.

I also looked in the database and the define_later_flag was not set.

Specifically I went into the Monitor, edited the content of the activity and clicked save but it did not allow the students to proceed.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Caroline Meeks

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Additional info: the user reloaded the activity and that fixed the problem.

Obviously we still want to know what the root cause was as it cost quite a bit of time in a teacher's middle school class today.

Posted by Caroline Meeks

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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That makes sense.

After you click on "save" in monitor, the students would need to press on the "Resume" button and that should get them access to the activity.

Caroline, I believe this can be due to the teacher accidentally marking the activity as "Define Later" in Author. Is there any chance you can check the sequence used for this lesson?

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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> clicked save but it did not allow the students to proceed.

That is bizarre. Does the student get the same message? Could you double check that you are on the same activity and lesson?

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Yes all students see the same message.

I can't reproduce this now, the users uploaded a new copy of the sequence. I'll try to keep track of this issue and get more data next time.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Dave Bauer

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I found the previous sequence in the courses run sequences folder.

I went in to Author and I can see none of the activities have Define in MOnitor checked off.

The first activity that gave this message says it is Read Only, I am not sure if that might be related.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Dave,

If the these activities where not set to Define in later, then what it could have happened is that a monitor/teacher went into the activity (in monitor) and clicked on the "Edit" button.

The moment they click on "Edit" the "define later" flag is set for the activity and it is not released until the teacher either cancels the edit or save the changes. If the browser window is closed, then the flag is still set. Ergo the problem that you guys are having.

I have added a new task to make this obviuos in monitor (see LDEV-2300).

Best thing to do now is to tell the teachers that if they do edit an activity from monitor, they need to remember to save any changes (even if they don't effectively change anything though).

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Caroline Meeks

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Hi Ernie,

This is a pilot course so multiple people have teacher edit privileged.

So if one person doesn't exit correctly, or their computer crashes or runs out of battery at the wrong time, then no one else can fix the course?

Posted by Caroline Meeks

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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> So if one person doesn't exit correctly, or their computer
> crashes or runs out of battery at the wrong time, then no
> one else can fix the course?

Sorry, I might have not expressed myself correctly.

If for some reason they have left the "define later" flag on (computer crash, close the browser, etc) any monitor/teacher (including the teacher whos browser crashed) can go back to Edit the activity from monitor, afterwards just click on save (changing or not anything) and that will fix this problem.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Yes, Caroline and I both tried that from the Monitor screen.

Later I looked inside the Authoring screen and the database and the activity was not set to define later.

It is "read only" in authoring, not sure how or why it is in that state.

I was going to look into the source to see what condition triggers that message, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Dave,

The issue about being read-only is because that's on the run-sequences folder.

When you create a lesson, LAMS creates a copy of the original sequence and puts it in the run-sequences folder for that course. The purpose of creating a copy is so that you can reuse the original sequence as much as you like without affecting the running instances of itself.

The running copy (in the run-sequence folder) is a readonly design from the point of view of LAMS Author. Because you don't want people to edit the design from Authoring as that's a *running* sequence. You can however edit the running design from monitor:

1.- Editing the content of existing activities (as i mentioned above)
2.- Changing the actual design (with Live Edit).


Anyway, that begs the question: "why do I have access to the run-sequences folder from author?". Well, say you modified your design a lot since you create a lesson... you can go back to the run-folder and see the designs as you run them with different courses.

Although when you open them from Author these sequences are read-only, you can "Save As" in your personal folder to get a copy of that running instance.

Hope that helps.

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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If the define later flag is not set in the lams_learning_activity table, what else could cause this message?

I haven't been able to find where the check is made in the source code yet.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Dave Bauer

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Specifically I took the lesson_id from the URL and look in the database to fine the activity that was returning that message and the define_later_flag was set to 0 in the database.

Otherwise I would have assumed that the define_later_flag was set and it was a user error.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Dave,

I'm very certain that this might have been a user error. You can check how the "define_late" flag gets set in a tool when the monitor clicks on Edit as follows:

1.- Create a sequence with one noticeboard activity. When you open the activity to edit its content put "Unique title" on the title field.
2.- Save and Save the design/sequence
3.- Now, create a lesson for it.

Now if you go to mysql and run:

select uid, title, define_later from tl_lanb11_content where title = 'Unique title';

+-----+----------------------+--------------+
| uid | title | define_later |
+-----+----------------------+--------------+
| 2 | Unique title | 0 |
| 21 | Unique title | 0 |
+-----+----------------------+--------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The uid 2 is the original sequence design. The second one (uid 21) is for the running lesson.

4.- No go to monitor, open the noticeboard, go to the Edit tab, and edit the activity... before you save it, check on the db again

select uid, title, define_later from tl_lanb11_content where title = 'Unique title';

+-----+----------------------+--------------+
| uid | title | define_later |
+-----+----------------------+--------------+
| 2 | Unique title | 0 |
| 21 | Unique title | 1 |
+-----+----------------------+--------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

As you can see now the define_later flag has been set.

If you jump as a learner, you will get the "Sorry, teacher editing activity now"

5.- Click on "Save" and that would release the flag.


Doing this I realized that there's an ugly bug here.. if you cancel the edit, the flag doesn't get release. So it does force you to save though.

For 2.3+, I've been thinking that we need better ways to alert monitors of this situations. Probably by making it very obvious which activities have these flags set in the sequence tab in monitor.

Hope that sheds some light.

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Two tasks to prevent/improve this issue in 2.3+

When editing in monitor if press the "Cancel" button, the define_later flag does not get removed.
http://bugs.lamsfoundation.org/browse/LDEV-2329

When a define later flag is set for an activity, show an obvious alert in Monitor sequence view
http://bugs.lamsfoundation.org/browse/LDEV-2330

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Ernie,

So the define_later flag is set without anyone choosing Define in Monitor?

That sounds like a serious bug all by itself. Why would that flag be set if the author did not choose that option? Or am I totally missing the point here?

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Dave Bauer

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Aha, apparently now I am awake. So define later is set if someone tries to edit the activity in the monitor, but it is not saved. That seems like a bug all by itself. It looks like that was put in place to stop learners while someone is editing, but anytime you set a lock on something you need a way to release it if there is a problem.

It seems like we need to notify the users in Monitor in two places, first, when you click edit it should tell you the activity is not available until you click cancel or save.

Perhaps we need a timeout of some sort? If you don't save it in X mins it should release the lock. If the teacher later comes back and clicks save, it shouldn't cause a problem. In most cases an abandoned edit should not lock everyone out.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Timeouts are evil. I think it'll be a lot better to make it really clear (with a strong visual indication) to all teachers/monitors that there's an activity being edited though.

I have added the two tasks above to prevent this in the future.

There's also a discussion about whether we need to stop the students while the teacher edit the content.

Perhaps we could do this in certain activities but not in others. Not sure. Any comments welcome

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione