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Show managers summary notes about their direct reports

 
Amir Elion
Show managers summary notes about their direct reports
by Amir Elion - Thursday, 30 July 2015, 3:14 AM
 

I have been trying to achieve this in various ways, with no success, so seeking ideas.

The need is to have trainers add course summary evaluation notes on learners in a course.

These notes should be visible by the learner's direct manager but not for the learner.

I tried all this:

  1. Add manual text grade to course. Manager can reach the direct report grades via their profile course link but also learner can see grade report in the course. If I set course to not show grades to users - managers can't see it either.
  2. I enabled student notes site setting, added "viewnotes" capability to team manager role. Trainers can added notes for course on the user but managers still get no permission to see the page on the students note page.
  3. I thought of using an assignment text feedback and a report builder assignment details report - and setting its content tab to show only "Direct reports" but seem like this report source has no content restrictions programmed for it.
  4. I considered the possibility of using learning plans and tweak the workflow so that learners don't see the items but trainers can add goals and comments. Not sure this is possible but seem too roundabout and complex anyway.
  5. I thought of using 360 feedback but this needs to be triggered by manager and note sure feedback can be hidden from learner.
  6. It is not feasible to create a course role to give to the managers to see grades as they will see other learners grades as well (not their direct reports), and anyway would require manual assignment of the role to each manager.

Any ideas on how this can be achieved?

Thanks,

Amir

Jamie Kramer
Re: Show managers summary notes about their direct reports
by Jamie Kramer - Friday, 31 July 2015, 1:19 PM
 

Those all seem like very good ideas. My head will always start steering me into the overly-engineered types of solutions causing me to miss the easy button at times, so my idea for a custom course activity may be over the top.

My other immediate thought was the assignment module too, but see that you covered that. It seemed like a natural place to do what you need. I am actually not currently familiar with report sources dealing with assignment module, but it seems that since one does exist perhaps it would be a logical place to have a new feature request to extend this report to allow for content restrictions based on direct reports.

As for the notes idea, perhaps that could also work if some extra capability checks were built in to it for the manager role.