assignments/handouts as folders

[kcrisman]

Am I the only one who finds it really confusing that assignments and handouts are always folders?  I certainly like the *option* of having this, but more typically in LMS one might give students access to a specific file.  I understand that with a directory structure then one can keep the assignment info and the handed-in copy together neatly, but it still seems odd to me (and confusing at first, even after reading various documentation), and potentially confusing to students.  But maybe that's just me?  

[William Stein]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 6:49 AM, kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Am I the only one who finds it really confusing that assignments and
> handouts are always folders?

Possibly. Nobody has ever once before complained about this in
several years. No matter what we will provide "assignments as
folders", so it's hard to imagine having two separate notions of
assignments: folders *and* files, will make things actually less
confusing.

> I certainly like the *option* of having this,
> but more typically in LMS one might give students access to a specific file.
> I understand that with a directory structure then one can keep the
> assignment info and the handed-in copy together neatly, but it still seems
> odd to me (and confusing at first, even after reading various
> documentation), and potentially confusing to students. But maybe that's
> just me?

It's possible. We really never had a complaint about this being
confusing before, as far as I remember.

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Best Regards,
William Stein

CEO, SageMath, Inc.

[Drew Youngren]

I like the folders. This just reminds me that I would like to see, when present, a default markdown file (probably README.md) displayed below the directory listing à la github. This would be a good place to put directions for student assignments (particularly for students who find it taxing to click on a directions file). 

[kcrisman]

I like the folders. This just reminds me that I would like to see, when present, a default markdown file (probably README.md) displayed below the directory listing à la github. This would be a good place to put directions for student assignments (particularly for students who find it taxing to click on a directions file). 

Thank you.  Or maybe there could even be a default HOMEWORKINSTRUCTIONS.md file whenever one explicitly creates a homework folder, which would have some boilerplate as in "This file contains instructions for the homework; please complete everything in this folder of your SMC project".  I think this would certainly address most of my issue, which is that I don't usually think of an assignment as a folder, and my bet is neither would colleagues who are much less early-adopter than I am.

[Daniel Krenn]

On 2017-01-10 04:20, Drew Youngren wrote:
> I like the folders. This just reminds me that I would like to see, when
> present, a default markdown file (probably README.md) displayed below
> the directory listing à la github. This would be a good place to put
> directions for student assignments (particularly for students who find
> it taxing to click on a directions file).

+1, README.md sounds like a good choice.

Daniel