Make Section Arranger visible to students and volunteers in read-only mode

[lilliealbert]

Note: Currently this feature does not have clear direction of how it should be implemented. This is a good story for someone who would like to dig into the codebase and try to figure out what a possible implementation could be.

Currently the Section Arranger page is only accessible to organizers. Add a read-only version so that students can see the page but can't change it.

Per comments below: The problem we'd be trying to solve with making the section arranger accessible by people other than moderators is that often times the projector screen isn't big enough to show all of the groups for large workshops. If students could be told to open up the sorter, find their name, and go to their classroom, a lot of the awkwardness of breaking up into small groups could be reduced.

[lilliealbert]

@tjgrathwell — do you think this should be linked to from anywhere that students can see? Or do we anticipate organizers just tell people the URL to visit?

[LauraKirby]

@lilliealbert @tjgrathwell how and when do you anticipate that students will use this? how will it be helpful to organizers or students? I find that with our high number of no-shows that there's a lot of last minute rearranging. Students might find it confusing to be exposed to that. We also typically move people around during registration....

[lilliealbert]

The problem we'd be trying to solve with making the section arranger accessible by people other than moderators is that often times the projector screen isn't big enough to show all of the groups for large workshops. If students could be told to open up the sorter, find their name, and go to their classroom, a lot of the awkwardness of breaking up into small groups could be reduced.

I would want this to be a thing where at the end of the opening presentation, the organizer giving the presentation could tell everyone to go to a particular link in Bridge Troll. I wouldn't expect students to be told to look at the section arranger while the classes are still being sorted out.

When I use the section arranger, I only include checked-in students and volunteers, so that usually takes care of the no-shows. Usually there are a few stragglers who come in during the course of the opening presentation, but dragging those over from the left into specific groups usually isn't a big deal in my experience.

[ultrasaurus]

@lilliealbert that makes a lot of sense. I wonder though, for that use case, if it might work as well to show students their class group in their profile (tho just for them, not part of their public profile).

It would be a separate issue, but I've always wanted a way to refer back to who was in my classes. If we took this UI approach, then we could expand this aspect later.