Grading homeworks with Webwork MAY not please everyone as it makes
them feel like every homework is an EXAM.
What if one use Webwork with UNLIMITED chances for each question and just grades homeworks pass/fail?
How set up Webwork to do that?
Is there anything wrong with this idea?
chris
How allow UNLIMITED attempts? Good idea so homeworks aren't like exams?
by Christian Seberino - Number of replies: 4
In reply to Christian Seberino
Re: How allow UNLIMITED attempts? Good idea so homeworks aren't like exams?
by D. Brian Walton -
This is exactly how I do my WeBWorK assignments. Each problem is set to have UNLIMITED attempts for each problem, and students' homework scores are simply the percentage of problems that they completed successfully by the deadline. I do not know if this is what you mean by pass/fail, since I actually get a percentage for each assignment (most students get 100% on every assignment).
In the "Max attempts" box for each problem, be sure you say "unlimited". (You may be able to get away with "-1".) In fact, for my class this is set as a default for every problem that I've used. Actually, this is a server default at my school as defined in the server's "global.conf" file.
Apparently, your school's server has some other default. To change the setting for your individual course, add the following lines to your course "course.conf" file (course-specific configurations).
# setting this to -1 gives students unlimited attempts.
$problemDefaults{max_attempts} = -1;
The "course.conf" file can be found at your course root directory level, found in the File Manager in WeBWorK either by using the "^" (up-level) button or the popup menu (your course name). The first line is a comment to remind you of what you did.
By the way, this only affects future problems that are added.
D. Brian Walton
James Madison University
In the "Max attempts" box for each problem, be sure you say "unlimited". (You may be able to get away with "-1".) In fact, for my class this is set as a default for every problem that I've used. Actually, this is a server default at my school as defined in the server's "global.conf" file.
Apparently, your school's server has some other default. To change the setting for your individual course, add the following lines to your course "course.conf" file (course-specific configurations).
# setting this to -1 gives students unlimited attempts.
$problemDefaults{max_attempts} = -1;
The "course.conf" file can be found at your course root directory level, found in the File Manager in WeBWorK either by using the "^" (up-level) button or the popup menu (your course name). The first line is a comment to remind you of what you did.
By the way, this only affects future problems that are added.
D. Brian Walton
James Madison University
In reply to D. Brian Walton
Re: How allow UNLIMITED attempts? Good idea so homeworks aren't like exams?
by Christian Seberino -
Thanks for your reply. I checked and I have global.conf set to unlimited attempts already.
How is scoring handled by default? If a student takes 4 attempts and another student takes 10 attempts on a question, does Webwork by default just give them each the same number of points?
(I've seen other homework systems where they lose lots of points for each wrong answer and really get stressed out.)
cs
How is scoring handled by default? If a student takes 4 attempts and another student takes 10 attempts on a question, does Webwork by default just give them each the same number of points?
(I've seen other homework systems where they lose lots of points for each wrong answer and really get stressed out.)
cs
In reply to Christian Seberino
Re: How allow UNLIMITED attempts? Good idea so homeworks aren't like exams?
by D. Brian Walton -
The default is that the score does not depend on how many attempts. In fact, I'm not sure if it is possible to change the score based on number of attempts without rewriting the scoring portion of the individual problems. So at least you are in luck that WeBWorK is doing what you would want.
If someone else were to want to have WeBWorK by default grade problems with some "reduced credit" for multiple attempts, I'm not sure how this would be done. I've never even tried to do this for an individual problem and couldn't find a quick answer through the wiki.
If someone else were to want to have WeBWorK by default grade problems with some "reduced credit" for multiple attempts, I'm not sure how this would be done. I've never even tried to do this for an individual problem and couldn't find a quick answer through the wiki.
In reply to Christian Seberino
Re: How allow UNLIMITED attempts? Good idea so homeworks aren't like exams?
by Michael Gage -
There are two options that can be used for reduced scoring:
1. A reduced scoring period (e.g. late homework counts, but at a discounted rate) see http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Reduced_Scoring
2. Successively reducing the score (grade) as the number of attempts increases can also be done by writing a PGgrader (like the examples in PGgrader.pl). See http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2691 for a preliminary discussion on this. This will require a little bit of knowledge of how WeBWorK can be extended.
By now either Dick Lane or Paul Pearson may have a grader that you could plug in and use to reduce the maximum grade as a function of how many incorrect attempts the student has already made.
I suspect that the reason it is not easy to find a well documented example on the wiki is that most instructors quickly come to your conclusion that this kind of reduction of points is frustrating and not particularly educational for most kinds of questions.
The discussion above suggests implementing it for multiple choice questions where it would be a gentler version of limiting the number of attempts.
Hope this helps.