DSD Instructor Guide for Setting Up Assembla for Student Teams

Instructors for the DSD course will need to set up a tool environment for the students. Student teams will use a version management system for the course project and also use the recommended tools for all communication and team interaction. This will allow the instructor to monitor and evaluate the team interactions.

Setting up Assembla

The recommended tool enviroment for the course is Assembla. Public Assembla work spaces may be set up for free. The instructor should create a login and password under Assembla and all Assembla activities will be done with that login. All workspaces which the instructor has created or joined will show when the instructor logs in, and any of the workspaces may be selected as the current workspace. The Assembla interface shows tabs for all of the tools enabled for the workspace.

For each team in the course, the instructor should create a separate Assembla work space, with the instructor as the owner of the work space. A work space is created with a name, and the work space should be configured with the following tools by adding them from the "Admin" tab:

Milestones
Tickets
Wiki
Messages
Files
Chat
Source/SVN

Adding students and other instructors for each team

For each student on each team, the instructor should add the student on the "Team" tab, using the student's email address. This will invite the student to join the Assembla work space. Similarly, the instructor who creates the work space should add the instructor at the remote site as a team member. The other instructor should also be made an "owner" of the space (this is done from the "Team" tab).

Customizing the student team's Assembla work space

As owner of each team's workspace, the instructor should make the following settings for the work space:

Add a custom "Due Date" field to tickets. On the "Tickets" tab, choose "Settings", and add a custom field with the name "Due Date", and the field should be marked as required. The field type should be Date. A Filter should then be added that sorts by Milestone and then by Due Date, and this should be made the default filter.