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Webwork questions on: Blackboard, self-enrollment, math for elementary teachers, and others

Webwork questions on: Blackboard, self-enrollment, math for elementary teachers, and others

by Adam Weyhaupt -
Number of replies: 2
I have several questions, as I'm preparing for a presentation to the department on the wonders of Webwork:

1) Does Webwork play nicely with Blackboard? Has anyone used Webwork as an "assignment" in Blackboard, or has anyone successfully authenticated or enrolled through Blackboard?

2) Is it possible to have students "self-enroll" in a course? I ask because it might be difficult to get this data automatically from the University, and we might be OK with students self-reporting this information. This capability is available if Webwork is used through the Moodle bridge.

3) Does anyone know of any questions written for a "Math for Elementary Teachers" type class? Some of the algebra questions would work, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of any others written for this purpose.

4) Does anyone know of a listing of places that use Webwork, and what they use it for? The NPL gives a hint...

5) Does anyone have experience training students to write questions? I'm thinking of a paid student worker that takes questions from a textbook and translates them into PG. I'm particularly curious if training materials are already available. I am aware of http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/TrainingAuthors --- is there anything else?

As always, thanks for your advice.

Adam
In reply to Adam Weyhaupt

Re: Webwork questions on: Blackboard, self-enrollment, math for elementary teachers, and others

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi Adam,

A partial answer to your question 4) can be found at http://math.webwork.rochester.edu/docs/sites/courses/links_to_courses.html
This site has not been updated in quite a while so it's pretty out of date (and probably a lot of links are broken because URL's have changed) but it does give an idea of who is using WeBWorK.

Others are more qualified than I to answer your other questions, particularly the status of the WeBWorK/Blackboard integration.

Arnie
In reply to Adam Weyhaupt

Re: Webwork questions on: Blackboard, self-enrollment, math for elementary teachers, and others

by Michael Gage -
In answer to the Blackboard question. We worked on this problem over this last summer but did not complete it. We have a prototype that allows you to login to WeBWorK through Blackboard --- and WeBWorK assumes that since you've come from Blackboard you are correctly authenticated.

As far as I can tell Blackboard doesn't allow other applications to authenticate against it -- at least for the installation we have at Rochester.

We also have not yet perfected the communication that will report back the homework grades for WeBWorK to Blackboard.

Hopefully we'll be able to finish this project next summer, but I can't promise much before then.

We do have all of these capabilities operating between Moodle and WeBWorK although even there the two "bridges" are still somewhat experimental betas.

We don't have an ability to self-enroll. That could probably be added by adding a new Authen.pm subclass module-- but again I'm not aware that anyone has done that already.

Hope this helps.

-- Mike