Objective

This app is made for the Department of Computer Science at University of Toronto for the following purposes:

1. Give the TA (teaching assistant) coordinator of the department an overview of TA applicants for each courses in the department for the upcoming semester/year so they can select a candidate and send an offer (with contract) to them.
2. Give applicants for TA-ship an interface to see and send their response (accept/reject) to a contract.
3. Give the instructor of each course the ability to create DDAH (Description of Duties and Allocation of Hours) forms for their TA.
4. Give the TAs an interface to see and send their response to a DDAH form for that course.
5. Give the contract coordinator an overview of accepted/rejected contract and a means to mark the processing status of these contracts.

Overview

This app is divided into three main portions:

1. TAPP: This section of the app is responsible for managing TA selecting and matching.
2. CP: This section of the app is responsible for managing contract offers and DDAH (Description of Duties and Allocation of Hours) forms.
3. TA-candidate/TA-facing interface: This section of the app is responsible for showing the contract offers and DDAH forms to the TA candidate and TA, respectively.

TAPP

It is an admin-only interface, where the TA coordinator can view and select applicants for that round of applicants. This data is separated by semester and can be further filter by application rounds.

This portion of the app is separated into five pages:

1. Summary: This is the landing page for TAPP. The purpose of this page is to give the admin a statistical overview of the selection progress in each course. This is also where the admin can import the JSON data exported from the CHASS-managed application site. You can also import general details of instructors and enrollment data for courses in that semester.
2. Courses: This is where the admin can modify details of a course. Examples of such information includes start date and end date, which are values that will later be used in generating the contracts for the course. The admin can also send a list of possible candidate for TA-ing the course via the sidebar. The list is sent via an auto-generated email.
3. Applicants by Courses (ABC): This page shows the applicant information for each course in tabular form and allows the admin select, filter, sort those applicants. The sidebar shows the number of selected applicants for the course vs. the number of TAs needed for that course.
4. All Assigned: This page shows all the applicants, who have been assigned to a course within the given session. It also gives the admin the ability to sort and filter via the applicant's attributes. Lastly, it provides an overview of how many as well as which courses the applicant has been assigned to.
5. All Unassigned: This page shows all the applicants, who have yet to be assigned to a course. Like in All Assigned, the admin can sort and filter the applicants via the applicant's attributes. However, unlike All Assigned, this page gives an overview of which courses these applicants would like to be assigned to.

CP

It is an interface available to both the admins (contract coordinators) and instructors.

On the admin interface, there are two pages:

1. Control Panel: This is a tabular interface that gives an overview of the applicants, who are offered a TA-ship for a course in that session. The admin is able to sort, filter, and perform batch actions on the listed offers. One such example of a batch action includes the ability to send out contract offers to TA candidates via auto-generated emails. Another is a nagging function which sends an auto-generated email to TA candidates, who have yet to respond to a contract offer. Furthermore, this interface provide an overview of the offer status, which can be listed as Unsent, Pending, Accepted, Rejected, Withdrawn, or Processed.
2. DDAH Forms: This is also an tabular interface with the option to sort, filter, and perform batch actions. One such example of a batch action is the ability to nag instructors, who are overdue for DDAH forms, via auto-generated emails. Another is the ability to nag TAs to approve of the completed DDAH forms via a similar sort of email. In the case where the instructors decided to send the DDAH information as a CSV to the admin as opposed to using the DDAH creator on the instructor side of CP, then the admin has the option to import that CSV as valid DDAH in the system. Furthermore, the DDAH forms can be previewed as a PDF. The admin can also see the DDAH status of each entry. The DDAH statuses include None, Created, Ready, Approved, Pending and Accepted.

On the instructor interface, the instructors can create DDAH form for their TA and submit the completed DDAH to the admin for approval. The approved DDAH can, then, be sent to the TA via auto-generated email and the TA will have the option to approve or raise concerns over the hours allocations. In the case where the DDAH forms are mostly the same for a course, the instructor has to option to create named DDAH templates and apply a chosen template to decrease repetitive typing.

TA-candidate/TA-facing interface

It is an interface available to the TA-candidates or TAs. In both instances, the interface can be accessed via the link provided in the auto-generated emails sent by the contract coordinator from CP. The link will redirect to a login page if the user is not logged in. Otherwise, the user will be presented with the appropriate document and a set of actions in response to the presented document.