** Using WeBWorK **

I've been playing around with what appears to be a very
nice open source, GPL licensed class management software
called Moodle. From what I've seen it might be a good
alternative to commercial systems like WebCT and Blackboard.
It is available through the web site moodle.org.

One very nice feature of Moodle is that it implements
dynamic URLs of the following sort. The instructor
enters a plain old URL into Moodle, but when the
student clicks on that link, Moodle adds extra parameters
to the URL indicating which student clicked on the URL,
where exactly in Moodle (s)he clicked it from, a timestamp
and an md5 checksum authenticating this data. I've
developed a WeBWorK interface to this API which may
also be useful for other purposes.

If I enter the following URL into Moodle as a "program resource"

https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/webwork/system/cgi-scripts/moodle2wwk.pl?course=math152demo&set=Hmwk1

Moodle adds the following user/authentication information
(when I am logged in as guest):

&extern_nav=%3CM152sp03zf%3E%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fmoodle%2F%2Fmod%2Fresource%2F..%2F..%2Fcourse%2Fview.php%3Fid%3D2%3E%3CResources%3E%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fmoodle%2F%2Fmod%2Fresource%2Findex.php%3Fid%3D2%3E&extern_crs=M152sp03zf&extern_usr=guest&extern_nam=Guest+User+&extern_tim=1046085363&extern_pwd=0c7f3bae837cd100aad6c23d3ead63c0

to obtain the following URL

https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/webwork/system/cgi-scripts/moodle2wwk.pl?course=math152demo&set=Hmwk1&extern_nav=%3CM152sp03zf%3E%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fmoodle%2F%2Fmod%2Fresource%2F..%2F..%2Fcourse%2Fview.php%3Fid%3D2%3E%3CResources%3E%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fmoodle%2F%2Fmod%2Fresource%2Findex.php%3Fid%3D2%3E&extern_crs=M152sp03zf&extern_usr=guest&extern_nam=Guest+User+&extern_tim=1046085363&extern_pwd=0c7f3bae837cd100aad6c23d3ead63c0

You can try it out yourself. You may need to recombine the URL into a
single line if it got split it up. I'll also try to put it below as
a clickable link.

Upon clicking this link, your browser should immediately open
up a "Do problem set" window for a random practice user on our
WeBWorK system. [If you try to use this to hack into our
WeBWorK installation by modifying the timestamp and change
the user name from "guest" to "fiedorow", you should get an
error message, due to authentication failure with the md5
checksum.

The source for this script is available at
http://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle2wwk.txt

Zig

link to Do Problem Set
link to Get Problem 1 from Problem Set
link to script source

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Zig

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Also I wanted to mention another cool feature of Moodle. It implements several backup authentication methods if the local password fails. The one which is most convenient for us at Ohio State is authentication by attempting to use the login information to connect to a central popmail server. This same idea can be implemented in Perl and can be seamlessly integrated into WeBWorK.

Zig

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I've finally gotten the moodle webwork interface working. You
can try logging into my Moodle course
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/
as user/pwd doe.123/doe.123 to check it out. You can also log
in as guest, but in that case you won't see the grades updated
in Moodle, since that is not provided for guest users.

Zig

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https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/

These scripts should be considered as pre-alpha, basically a proof of concept.

For a background to this, look at my previous thread in this group.

To see this interface in action, go to

https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/

and log in as user doe.123 with password doe.123

Zig

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In response to a request, I've also put installation instructions
for these scripts at the same URL

https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/

Incidentally I am pretty sure the same general strategy can be
used to quickly hack up interfaces between WeBWorK and many other
program. For instance, it's the same strategy I used to interface
with WIMS.

Zig

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I've made a number of improvements in the WeBWorK interface with Moodle.
First of all downloading of hard copy of WeBWorK assignments is now
supported by clicking a link within Moodle.

Secondly the truly gruesome code for returning WeBWorK scores to Moodle
(in return2moodlep2.pl) is now gone. I figured out some more things
about the inner workings of Moodle and replaced it by something much
cleaner, more robust and quicker.

Again I welcome you to log into
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/
as doe.123 with password doe.123
You may leave your comments on the News Forum for the Moodle course.

I have made available the updated scripts again at
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/

Zig

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