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Danny Glin - Suggestions

Danny Glin - Suggestions

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicSuggestions topic started 9/13/2002; 6:47:38 AM
last post 2/5/2003; 3:53:16 PM
userDanny Glin - Suggestions  blueArrow
9/13/2002; 6:47:38 AM (reads: 3383, responses: 16)
Hi guys, As we've been nailing down the final details to run our first webwork course at the University of Calgary, a couple little things have come up which I think would be beneficial in future releases. When setting open dates and due dates, we rely on the server's clock being accurate. It becomes an even larger issue when using webwork for quizzes, and giving students only a certain hour with which to complete the assignment. As such, we have to trust that the server time is close to accurate. Would it be possible to display the server time on some of the webwork pages, so the professors can determine the proper starting and ending times, and also so students know how much time they have left?

The second issue that arose is as follows. Some of our professors are not comfortable with the Unix shell. As such, we are trying to minimize the amount of course management done on the shell, and encourage the professors to rely on the web interface (the professor's page). One item that we noticed could not be changed from the professor's page is the course message of the day. Is it possible to add an option to the professor's page to edit the course message of the day?

Let me know if you have any imput on these suggestions

Danny Glin

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userMichael Gage - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/14/2002; 4:19:52 PM (reads: 3653, responses: 0)
Posting the time on the page wouldn't be very difficult. Thanks for the suggestion.

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.

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userZbigniew Fiedorowicz - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/15/2002; 10:02:30 AM (reads: 3660, responses: 0)
>We can add a subroutine on the professor's page to edit the course message of the day.

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

Zig

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/15/2002; 2:32:50 PM (reads: 3640, responses: 0)
Hi,

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

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userZbigniew Fiedorowicz - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/16/2002; 3:27:14 AM (reads: 3656, responses: 0)
Hi Arnie,

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

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userJohn Jones - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/16/2002; 9:44:46 AM (reads: 3667, responses: 0)
In any case, now both suggestions have now been incorporated into the cvs version.

John

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/16/2002; 11:04:03 AM (reads: 3628, responses: 0)
John,

Thanks for the updates.

Arnie

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userBill Ziemer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/17/2002; 7:00:37 AM (reads: 3639, responses: 0)
Something that occurs frequently is the instructor not selecting problem sets when adding a student. This has been an amazingly big headache from an administration viewpoint.

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.

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/17/2002; 9:49:39 AM (reads: 3617, responses: 0)
Hi Bill,

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

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/18/2002; 7:15:35 AM (reads: 3603, responses: 0)
Here is an idea. One could have a checkbox above the list of dates that says:

"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

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/18/2002; 9:17:26 AM (reads: 3607, responses: 0)
Hi Bill,

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

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userBill Ziemer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/21/2002; 6:06:05 AM (reads: 3612, responses: 1)
Thanks Arnie, That is a great fix. This got me to finally start fooling with the layout of the professor's page, and the utilities. Instructors have been griping that the professor's page isn't the easiest thing to use, and I have been compiling a gripe list. The changes are mainly cosmetic, and not that drastic (since I really don't want to spend alot of time on this :-) ), but I thought I would put it out there for others to take a look and comment:

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...)

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userMichael Gage - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/22/2002; 5:40:22 AM (reads: 3877, responses: 0)
Hi Bill,

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

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userBill Ziemer - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/24/2002; 9:29:37 AM (reads: 3579, responses: 0)
I have incorporated Mike's suggestions into profLogin.pl, same URL and logins: http://bosna.natsci.csulb.edu/webwork/demoCourse

login: apizer password: 111-11-1111

login: gage password: 444-44-4444

It does look much cleaner now. --Bill

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userMichael Gage - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/24/2002; 12:24:22 PM (reads: 3563, responses: 0)
Looks great, Bill. I think it is a big step forward in making the page more useable.

-- Mike

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userGavin LaRose - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
9/25/2002; 1:28:02 AM (reads: 3572, responses: 0)
Anyone still reading this thread? :)

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

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userJohn Jones - Re: Suggestions  blueArrow
2/5/2003; 3:53:16 PM (reads: 3481, responses: 0)
I think Bill's version of the profLogin page is pretty nice. Is it going to be incorporated into the standard WeBWorK?

John

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