If you have sign in required in Self Service then do it as a script in self service scoped based on the AD groups used to give access in the first place (i.e. If you have access to the share you can see it in Self Service).
Not sure how ot best do the disconnect, but you could probably just have a launchagent or launchdaemon running that checked for specific events every few minutes and disconnected the shares if they appeared to be not in use anymore.

The most standard setup we've seen in computer labs is directory logins (usually AD), with shared drives mapped based on group membership. This has the added benefit of kerberos authentication so network drives are completely automatic for the users.

Is that a setup you could use?

That is what we use currently, which creates the added work of supporting 6 user accounts on each station. This becomes a hassle when we are creating our images and need to configure each user the same way. Instead of doing the work once, we do it 6 times (e.g. setting homepages, changing history-saving settings, configuring applications).

In addition, we often get mid-semester software requests which have to be configured with each user as well.

You could create an inetloc file to call the shared folder. You could script it by outputting the contents into a document and then dropping it on the desktop or wherever you want it to reside -

populate inetloc file

out='<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>URL</key> <string>'smb://path/to/file'</string> </dict> </plist>'

echo $out > /Users/Username/Desktop/ShareName.inetloc

Something like that. You could wild card other variables like the username or even the shared folder if you get the path through dscl.

@joshbuddy That was what I had used in the past and couldn't remember; thanks! Anyway I could do a timeout for something like this? Say, once they run the inetloc file and it connects, it will disconnect after half an hour of inactivity or something of the sort?