Ares 5.0 Features - We Want Your Opinions!

These questions pertain to the approved UserVoice request for Ares to support multiple instructors that is planned for inclusion in Ares version 5.0. They have been cross-posted.

Three questions about web searches for students:

1. If a course does NOT have currently have an instructor attached to it, should this course appear in the "search by instructor" results in the web?

2. Should courses with no instructors appear in any web searches? If so, should there be some distinction, where only courses that have course or full proxies, but no instructors appear - whereas courses with NO administrative user (no instructor, no proxies) don't appear at all?

3. Should the "search by instructor" web search return matches for course proxies or full proxies? Should it return matches from the text in the Displayed Instructor field or just results based on matches of the first name/last name of users with an instructor role in active/upcoming courses? Our initial plans were to have results returned just from the first and last names of users with an instructor role in active/upcoming courses. We have some sites that designate one "lead instructor" and don't want too many cooks in the kitchen, but want students to be able to find courses by searching instructors that aren't technically given instructor privileges in Ares.

Two questions for sites that allow users to search and add themselves to courses in the web:

1. Should a co-instructor be able to add themselves to an existing course as an instructor? If so, does there need to be some sort of check by Ares staff? Or by the existing instructor? How would you want Ares staff to be notified or existing instructors to be notified?

2. Should an instructor be able to search and add themselves to a course that currently has no instructor, but already exists in the system? If so, does there need to be some sort of review by staff? How would you want Ares staff to be notified? Currently, flags are only available for items. Should staff only be alerted if an instructor that does this has submitted an item request, then flag that item? Or should staff be notified immediately?