Unit settings

[sdaitzman]

Screenshots

Spec

• Units have settings, similarly to course authoring configuration options. Unit settings appear as the final tab.

In Scope

• Unit visibility
• Enable/disable discussion

Not in scope

• Release date / grading / other options
• Show draft status for edited settings (planned in a future story)

[sdaitzman]

Could move this to #1604 or a different future epic depending on how it makes sense to group sidebar/unit features

[bradenmacdonald]

@jmakowski1123 @sdaitzman Can we reduce the scope here for the MVP / initial epic 12? Maybe make it read-only or remove it entirely?

[sdaitzman]

@bradenmacdonald I think we could, but it interacts a bit with #1602. I think it would be a strange product experience to be able to import a unit into a library, but not be able to change the settings back to defaults.

That being said, I think it's a bit lower-impact for units than it would be for section/subsection, since the only settings are visibility and enable/disable discussions.

[bradenmacdonald]

@sdaitzman In that case, the simpler story could be "reset to defaults when importing units into a library". But I'm fine with implementing this as is. It's not a big story.

[bradenmacdonald]

@sdaitzman @jmakowski1123 Should any of these settings have a discrete "use default value" option? So instead of always specifying "Enable discussions" as either "yes" or "no" for each individual unit, I can instead choose to set it to "use default" which will then be determined at the course level.

Not sure if that makes sense for these particular settings, but I think in general that's a much nicer pattern than forcing every setting to be made individually on each unit/component.

[ormsbee]

I think that allowing users to specify a value for "discussion_enabled" will do more harm than good. Determining whether the discussion is enabled isn't just a toggle switch--it also depends on course level configuration and the context the Unit is in.

For example, even if the Unit says that it's discussable, that might be disabled because the Unit is added to a gradable subsection, and the course is configured to not allow those to be discussed. Discussions are also automatically disabled for Units inside proctored or time-limited exams. Allowing this to be set in the library will just make it even more confusing, because it'll be one more thing that needs to be checked. Having a course-local value vs. library override would add another layer of unnecessary complexity.

If we just leave it as unspecified in the library, then it will follow the same rules that a newly created Unit in any particular subsection would, and I think that's almost always going to be the correct behavior.

[pomegranited]

@sdaitzman @jmakowski1123 @ormsbee @bradenmacdonald CC @edschema -- currently, when you sync changes from an upstream Library Unit to the unit used in a course, it overwrites any local changes to the Unit (which is also why we're disabling downstream Unit editing in Teak: #1712).
How should editing and syncing work for Unit settings?

• Should course authors be able to edit downstream Unit settings in their course?
• When syncing upstream changes to a downstream Unit, should settings be ignored? all, or just some?

EDIT My apologies, course Unit settings don't get overwritten; fixing the edit issue here: #1863