Support instructors/teachers/professors using DW for class-related projects

[denise]

Title:
Support instructors/teachers/professors using DW for class-related projects

Area:
posting, communities, using DW to conquer the world

Summary:
We get at least three or four instructors per semester asking for promo codes for account creations for their classes (which we're always happy to give!) Since DW is so well-suited to keeping class journals, submitting writing assignments, or requiring class participation, I'd love to be able to code some more support for academic use.

Description:
Obviously each teacher's use of DW would be different, depending on the type of class they're teaching and the level at which they're teaching it (high school, undergrad, graduate work, adult enrichment, etc). This suggestion is less "we should add this" and more "we should brainstorm what we can add that would actually be most helpful".

I'm basically proposing a new category of accounts: "instructor accounts" or "academic accounts" and "student accounts" or "learner accounts" (names obviously subject to change, yadda). This will allow us to set different capabilities for these accounts.

The "academic package" would consist of:

* one promo code per class/class section;
* one "academic community" account per section, with slight changes to the standard community model to make them more appropriate for teacher/class interaction;
* one (or more if co-taught or if class has a TA) "instructor account" to be the admin of the community (or the instructor could use their standard DW account, but all of the instructors I know don't want their students finding their regular DW account!)
* a number of "student accounts" created via the promo code, where the students can choose their own usernames and migrate the student account to a standard account later if they'd like.

Things I can think of, off the top of my head:

* the ability for the instructor to "clear out" a community's posts and comments, moving them to some form of archive (essentially a community rename?) each semester/quarter/marking period/etc in order to store each semester's classwork separately and start each semester with a blank slate

* ability to force a student account created with a specific promo code to be subscribed to/a member of the community for the project, without having to check the checkbox during account creation

* ability to designate an instructor account for each "academic package" that will automatically subscribe to any account created from the promo code (so the instructor won't 'lose' students or have to get them to submit their username to the instructor through some other method)

* ability for the instructor to subscribe to all posts and comments made in the community (without the comm needing to be a paid community, I mean)

What other things would instructors using DW for academic/teaching purposes want to see, or would find useful?

(Edited to remove poll #7997, since this is more of an information-gathering entry than a suggestion!)

Support for HTTPS on all pages, including journal pages

[josht]

Title:
Support for HTTPS on all pages, including journal pages

Area:
security, privacy, https,

Summary:
I'd like to have the option of using HTTPS to access all dreamwidth pages, including journal pages as well as pages on dreamwidth.org itself.

Description:
Inspired by the HTTPS Everywhere addon (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere), I started looking through the sites I regularly visit to find which ones have HTTPS support. I frequently read journals on dreamwidth, but dreamwidth doesn't support https on journal pages; the certificate only works for www.dreamwidth.org. Also, visiting https://www.dreamwidth.org/ redirects to the login page rather than serving the front page securely; changing an http URL to https should serve the same content securely, rather than changing the content served.

Having HTTPS on all pages would secure acccounts against session-hijacking, a particular concern when on more insecure Internet connections, such as public wifi, or university or corporate networks. HTTPS would also improve privacy. The web needs more encrypted packets and less plaintext.

Poll #8378 Support for HTTPS on all pages, including journal pages

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
25 (67.6%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (32.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)