Jill is working on a new topic (

Processes that shape the earth/Plate Tectonics Version II (PT)) which shares a number of misconceptions with another topic (Earth Science: Processes that shape the Earth / Plate Tectonics (EP)).

Problem: She changed the topic of those misconceptions believing it would be available to both topics. Once she realized this was not the case, she changed the topic back, but the numbering was off.

Solution: She provided me a list of which misconceptions were out of sync. Because adding a misconception involves updating multiple tables I actually had to add the misconceptions through the Item interface and then change the numbering on the backend.

Conclusion: The conclusion is that the conclusion is pretty obvious. This functionality needs to be revised. Changing the topic of a misconception has considerable consequences throughout the Items utility, so I think it may be necessary to add an additional step to this process. For example, have the current topic displayed along with a check box and a disabled/hidden topic menu. Then use the checkbox to enable/disable the menu and possibly some kind of textual warning (“Changing this is likely to break something.”).

Another note is that the ‘code’ column denoting the numbering sequence is not a unique column so we could have the numbering be editable on the interface. Although this could have some duplication complications.

I also found it strange that when submitting a new misconception, there is no notification and you are not redirected back to the miscon list. I found out the hard way that once you submit a misconception you are essentially in edit mode (not Add New Miscon anymore) and any changes made are being made to the record you just added. It wasn’t obvious to me the difference between Add and Edit mode.