NPLNotes

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Notes on the NPL: What it has, What it needs

The NPL was created by Jeff Holt, John Jones and Bill Ziemer.

Organization

By default, we see a page with subject, chapter, section.

Issues

Should there be a "new" NPL that we should consider? Either peer reviewed, or with reduced redundancy, etc.?

Additional Metadata

• Learning objectives (can this be addressed by more or better keyword tagging, and/or semantic tagging?)
• Frequency of use, or number of errors per problem; could this be gathered from remote sites?
  • When should this be done? Browser, or instructor based---so an instructor could submit the use by course; or as something that runs from the NPL-Update script?
• Ability to tell, from the library browser, which problems have solutions or hints; or which problems use MathObjects; or which are graphical.
• "Parent" or "child" data: this problem is an edit of that, etc.

Missing Functionality

• Keyword tagging is very uneven. Can this be improved?
• Would a full text search be useful? Possible?
• Ability to restrict the text editions that are displayed in the library browser---either by having the WeBWorK administrator check the texts that would be displayed, or by grandfathering out of existence some of the older texts
• Peer review. Should there be a peer reviewed NPL?
• Support for problems in different languages---Spanish, etc.
• Search for problems using graphics, etc.
• Support for boolean operators in the search: and, or,...
• Support for variation in units in a problem (feet, meters, etc.)

Redundancy

There are a lot of problems that are very similar. How can we address issue?

• Group problems by cohort, so that one of the problems is displayed, and the rest of the cohort could be displayed on request.