** Using WeBWorK **

<| Post or View Comments |>

We can add a subroutine on the professor's page to edit the course message of the day. I think the problem editor can already be tricked into editing the MOTD, but in any case we write a front end to the editor which makes it easier to do this and more obvious that it can be done.

<| Post or View Comments |>

Huh? This can already be done from the "Housekeeping utilities" page. (At least this is the case with version 1.7.)

Zig

<| Post or View Comments |>

Here is the reason for the confusion. This will be in the standard version 1.8 release but is not in the standard 1.7 release. It has been in the CVS for about 3 months now so if you update from there you have it.

Arnie

<| Post or View Comments |>

No, the "edit course motd" function was available in version 1.7 released last fall. Perhaps it was later removed? (There was related function on the housekeeping page, which I pointed out was a security risk.)

Zig

<| Post or View Comments |>

John

<| Post or View Comments |>

Thanks for the updates.

Arnie

<| Post or View Comments |>

To fix this I have changed line 275 from <OPTION to <OPTION SELECTED in profAddStudent.pl. To have the default action be to build all problem sets rather than none.

<| Post or View Comments |>

I do not like this option since by default this will give the added students different due dates than the other students have (unless the prof adding students is very careful). It will also give students the same due dates for all sets (again unless the prof is very careful and changes your default --- see below).

Early in the semester when most students add a course, I want to give them exactly the same due dates as all other students. This is easy to do if, as you say, profs remember to (re)build the sets after adding students (and the default option "none" is kept).

Later in the semester when a student adds a course, the prof may decide to have the student do some (or all) old sets. The default due dates are chosen to be reasonable dates for this and can be edited. If one wants to give the student different due dates for different assignments, then what he/she has to do is (1) add the students, select some of the assignments, and enter the due dates. Then (2) they can use the back button, select other assignments and other due dates and then "add" the students again. Since the students are already in the course, all that will happen is that the new assignments with the new due dates will be built. This can be repeated as many times as necessary.

One of the strengths of WeBWorK is if you do not like the defaults we have chosen, it is easy to change them even if this involves a simple change to the sourse code. So to each his own. Hopefully the defaults we have chosen will be the most useful ones.

Arnie

Arnie

<| Post or View Comments |>

"Use original open, due, and answer dates. This will override any dates given below."

Then I guess you could have Bill's select all option and the above checkbox checked as the defaults.

Arnie

<| Post or View Comments |>

I implemented the above idea which includes your changes. Grab a copy of profAddStudent.pl from the CVS and see if it does what you want.

Arnie

<| Post or View Comments |>

http://bosna.natsci.csulb.edu/webwork/demoCourse

login: apizer password: 111-11-1111

login: gage password: 444-44-4444

(I don't know why the login valid page is red...)

<| Post or View Comments |>

This looks great. As you realize the "cosmetics" is really very important in terms of useability, so we really should do a lot more cleanup along these lines.

I've got a suggestion, that might not take much to implement. Put the links across the top of the page inside a rectangular table (so we can space them a bit more compactly) and link the last four directly to their respective pages. Then it's just one click to get to the class list page or the scoring page.

This means placing a copy of the form inside the table entry (it will look huge in the HTML code, but it will take up little screen real estate to have a button instead of the link). I would leave the original form (down the page away) as well in case someone wants to check the directions.

Even the first entries could be made into forms inside a table, with only the necessary buttons, none of the explanations. That gives a quick reference when you know what you are doing and which page you want, while still leaving the explanations on the rest of the page for those times when you've forgotten exactly how things work.

Eventually we could place the explanations on separate help pages which are only loaded when we ask for them, but that job is probably a bit more involved to code. It's probably better to leave that as part of a (future) general project to upgrade the help mechanism on all pages.

Thanks for getting us started on improving the useability aspects of the professor page.

-- Mike

<| Post or View Comments |>

login: apizer password: 111-11-1111

login: gage password: 444-44-4444

It does look much cleaner now. --Bill

<| Post or View Comments |>

-- Mike

<| Post or View Comments |>

Another suggestion from some of our students: make it so that pressing "enter" on a problem goes to the previewer rather than to a submission. This is significant for us because we cap the number of allowed attempts. I haven't bothered to investigate it, but I suspect that simply reversing the order of the preview and submit buttons on the problem page would accomplish this.

Cheers,
Gavin

<| Post or View Comments |>