** Using WeBWorK **

When I act as a student and try to email the instructor, it says that no recipient has been specified.

Come to think of it, I don't believe I specified an instructor anywhere. The admin user for the course has user permission level 10, so presumably that user is the instructor. But how do I specify an email address for this user, and will this fix my problem?

Also, we also wish to add additional instructors. The documentation indicates that I should run a command line script in the templates directory of the course, called setProfPermissions.pl or something like that. Is it really not possible to add a professor from the graphical interface?

Basically, the file setProfPermissions.pl does not appear to exist in the templates directory anyway. Should there be a symbolic link to it? If so, where should that link lead to? We don't seem to be able to find such a file in the entire WebWork installation. Moreover, if there is supposed to be a link, how was I meant to induce it to create one in the first place?

The following information may be useful in order to determine what has gone wrong here, but we have since fixed these additional problems manually:

- The Rochester problem set was not in fact installed with the initial installation as the documentation claims. We had to install it separately. - The documentation says that there should be a "File Transfer" icon on the left hand side, if you are a professor. This was not the case for me when I logged in as the admin user. I instead used the "File Manager" to upload a class list. However, the program did not find the classlist from the import feature unless it was installed in a particular directory. However the information about which directory I should install it was not included with the documentation I was following.

Regards,

Bill Hart UIUC

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I sorted this out. One follows the following "intuitive procedure" for setting the email address of the instructor:

- Go to "Instructor Tools" - Select the user one wishes to make an instructor - Select "Edit" - Set permissions to 10 - Fill in email address

This fixed the problems.

However, I'd still like to know, what permission level should I set for a TA, and where can I find a description of what the individual permission levels do?

Regards,

Bill Hart. UIUC.

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The permission level for a TA is "5"; this and what the different permission levels let a user do are listed in the global.conf file found in the conf directory in the WeBWorK tree (search for "Authorization system" in that file to find the right section). I'm not sure if there is a clearer statement of what the different permission levels allow elsewhere; if so, I'm sure someone better informed than I will chip in.

Gavin

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As Gavin points out, the final arbiter of what the permission levels mean is set in global.conf, but the help page gives you the conventional values.

I suspect that instructions you followed for editing email actually allow you edit all of the basic data for either a student or a professor, however they probably neglected to mention that.

The instructor tools page collects a lot of short cuts for frequently performed tasks, including editing student data, but its help page isn't quite as complete as some of the others. It's probably better to start with the Homework sets editor page and Classlist editor page until you feel comfortable with the functions that webwork performs. We're glad to take suggestions for the help pages (or even better volunteers for writing and revising them!!)

In any case I hope this information helps.

Take care,

Mike

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