First of all, thanks for posting this, Caroline.
Given the relatively tight schedule and the fact that dotLRN is still something of a moving target (though stabilizing rapidly), the fact that you folks will be busy with testing, data migration, getting bugs fixed, etc, it might be wise to just make what exists today work for your August 1 deadline. While I imagine you intend to farm out the project, you folks are going to have a very busy summer. In my experience working with Sloan (and other clients) things go best when there's a lot of communication back-and-forth, and it just seems a relatively straightforward first effort would be best. Meaning communications and coordination won't be overly stressed during what I think will be a fairly stressful time.
Of course I may be wrong. You may already have testing and data migration in the bag :) But I do know your August 1 deadline is solid.
The first step towards the larger picture would seem to be an analysis of the current datamodel to see if it is flexible enough to serve as a base for further development. I haven't looked at OF's changes yet - the basic need is to be able to attach a survey to any object in the system (much as we're talking about with "general ratings") and I know the original datamodel didn't support that.
As far as workflow ... the concept's great but IMO the design goal's not been fully met, yet. It's important to OpenACS that we do meet that goal but I wouldn't depend on our doing so in this timeframe. In my experience it's harder to incorporate than I first expected.
Don't take this as a vote against using it - eventually I want to see workflow so easy to use that it we do so almost everywhere. For now, though, I'd think carefully before deciding either way. If workflow would help in defining the flow through different forms of surveys then using it is probably a plus. If you think that there may be some need to make changing that flow relatively easy to customize down the road, then workflow can definitely be a plus if it is used correctly.
