PREP 2011 Notes June 23

Meeting at Carriage House

June 23, 2011

Wireless

• maa-ch
• euler2007

Goal

[Groups]

• course manifest
• README
• syllabus
• course_info.txt
• minimum of 12 assignments

General Workflow

• find good NPL problems to fill out assignment
• improve them by writing solutions, hints, converting to math objects, etc.
• write new problems if necessary
• write set definition files
• save files to a nicely named directory relative to your model course
  • if copied from NPL, reference the original problem
• testing, including export to pdf
• export

Daily Outline

• Morning: Talks
• Afternoon: Work
• 5:00pm status reports

Marilou

Using Webwork for Mathematics with Business Decisions [Decisions Course]

Share course materials

• ...with colleagues as one large zipped file with all dates, etc. set in a reasonable manner
• Open dates all the same before the start of the course
• Due dates starting one week into the course for the first set and then adding a week for each additional set
• Answer due date set to far into the future

Editing course header and set header files

• Discussion regarding how many attempts students should be allowed to have on each question
  • New feature will tell students if they are resubmitting previously submitted attempts
• Course header files contain info such as due dates and links to the actual problems used. Text.
• Set header files contain info about the actual assignment. Perl. Can do two separate files (?) to get HTML into these files but it is better to use Perl constructs so that any printed version will also display correctly.
• Problem collection files

Teachers Toolkit

• 32 pages...
• Templates
• Hard copy collection of assignments for the course
• Problem Index
• Roster
• Quick Start Guide
  • Including a checklist for instructors to follow as they set up their course.
• Tutorial, including screenshots of various features

Arnie Pizer

Mostly a tutorial for folks who have very limited exposure to Webwork.

Features of Webwork

• Assign an orientation problem set to introduce students to using Webwork.
  • You can steal the homework file from Davide. Located now in the PREP Webwork server.
• To create guest accounts, click on Classlist Editor and import users from file demoCourse.lst
  • Allows users to log in and experiment on the problem set without anyone knowing who there are.
• Using "sections" for students allows one homework set to be used for multiple class sections.
• When removing a student from the course, it is often better to "drop" them instead of deleting them.
• Be certain to save Set Defintion File at the end of the term so that the course homework sets can easily be imported into another set in a later term.
• Gateway and proctored gateway modes can be used for quizzes when you want students to not be able to resubmit a new attempt w/o first going to see someone in a lab (for example)
• Implementation and use of Reduced Credit Period and partial credit.
• Demonstration of other administrative features and how to change them in Webwork.

Marilou Redux

• Text Book Suggestions
• [| QuickStart Guide] has been posted on the wiki. A QuickStart Guide could be a substitute for a README file.
• A syllabus for a course will consist of:
  • List of Topics
  • Correspondence of Textbooks

List of Topics	WW problem

• PDF of course assignments?

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all typos and misteaks ;) by John Travis additional notes from others present are welcome. Add your name.