Grading in Europe: Sakai 2.2 does it!

As Frank mentioned in the previous post, the Dutch perspective on Sakai would be shared here. This is a first post from the perspective of the University of Twente (a little background: we are planning on running some pilots with Sakai 2.2 from the start of September, which marks the beginning of the new 'collegejaar').
In the past weeks we have been talking with several teachers about what they want before their first pilot with Sakai can actually happen. They had several remarks, but they where quite positive in general. Their most important remarks were twofold:

• that the concept of roles and users was a bit confusing (questions like "Who exactly can create a projectsite?" we are looking into that right now)
• the way the grading works is completely unusable in our Dutch context

Well, actually regarding the second remark, we have looked at Sakai 2.1.1. where this is absolutely true. And even worse: this seemed to be quite hard-coded also.
But now we have Sakai 2.2! As of 2.2, configurable database-stored grading scales are supported. This is exactly what we have been looking for. The scales are referred to only when creating a gradebook. From then on, the gradebook’s mappings of those scales to percentages stay under the control of the instructor.
So, it now is quite easy for us to use our Dutch grading schemes (1 to 10, where 1 means "very very bad") or any other alternative scheme that you can think of.
If you want more current information on the Gradebook, check out the wiki at http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/SG2X/Home
To be continued...