Staring at Beta 1 of Windows 7 I am also looking over GITI’s Education module and thinking about the comments I have been given recently about it. It would seem that while in general the assignment portion of the module is complete, except for a few process tweaks and a new feature for bulk edits. However, the course management side of things is not as happy. This is where the parallels are drawn between Windows 7 and GITI’s Education module. Things are done the way that they are because they have always been done that way. A few months ago I put in a few changes to the GITI code to allow for adding complete semesters and following the course process (registration through grading) in a rough fashion. This is what I think of as the “Vista” phase of the new generation of the Education module, things have been changed to move in a new direction, but everything isn’t completely baked and there are a lot of problems that must be resolved before it is ready to meet the world. The biggest thing I am running into is the lack of consistency between pages. One page allows for quality points, one doesn’t. One page takes instructor email, another doesn’t. And the biggest oversight in GITI ever, one of my pages will take a course section number, and the new one does not, but then records to the database as though it does, oops! In general, the new parts of Education are strong, but they are also not as tested as their older (6 years in June) counterparts because they make database modifications in bulk, and at present there is no division between the test GITI and the production GITI. Currently, everything just feels like a giant mess that I haven’t figured out how to sort yet. This semester could make or break the GITI Education module.