Hi Aaron,
Yes I am sure its a tricky process. I was referring to a "Mahara Export Procedure" described in a Catalyst document titled "Solution Design for Mahara and Moodle Integration" (June 2013) which said:
"A submitted page or collection will be archived under certain conditions, e.g. when an institution using Moodle decides to use the LTI assignment and / or when page submissions to groups are made and the archiving setting has been activated. The Mahara export process needs to be able to archive submitted pages / collections after the tutor / teacher finishes grading either in Moodle or in a group that allows submissions."
If that process were implemented, then could the archive not be taken at the point of submission rather than the point of grading / release?
If so then the pages / collections could immediately be released back to the student.
Regards your points above:
1) Artifacts / file access would be an issue, probably the biggest hurdle.
2) When Kristina described this process to me (prior to me seeing the document) the concept of "retention periods" was mentioned so that files would clear down after a given period of time.
3) I envisaged feedback being left on the live copy not the snapshot. The purpose of locking / taking snapshots is to enforce an assignment deadline. Staff have a number of ways to give feedback, I think most use Moodle assignment feedback but in the case of ongoing weekly journals they like to leave feedback on the Mahara pages / journal entries.
4) I would imagine those issues would come under the scope of the project to develop these features (again referring to the Catalyst document I saw).
I don't know how well this process would work / how reliable it would be. The document I saw has concepts for admin screens showing "failed exports" etc.
I do think it is worthy of further consideration though, especially as development of these features already seems to have been planned.
Again, if this process is implemented and does work, why not take the snapshot on submission as opposed to grading?
Regards, Jez