Group Awareness in Mailtool

Integrating group awareness into the fine-grained recipient selection has proved somewhat problematic, and so for the 2.4 release the following factors impinged upon the design, which we take to be an iteration suitable for further usability testing:

The end result is that there are 3 ways to expand a recipient list. The default way - an alphabetical listing of all contained members - is always available. If any groups are defined in the site, a second expansion action link becomes available: "Select Groups." If any sections are defined in the site, yet another action link becomes available: "Select Sections." The screen below shows a site with all three together for the Student role.

When the groups are expanded, initially only the list of defined groups are available.

A second expansion shows the individual members of a group. Some instructors tell us they need to check this to be sure a given group is the one they have in mind, and it also gives them the option of selecting only a few individuals within a group. The group/section views then also serve as another way of arranging large recipient lists for readability, since a full listing of all students in a large course can be unwieldy.