Hi,
What is the proper procedure for editing a problem that has already been assigned?
I found a mistake in a problem, and when I edited it, everyone seemed to get the new problem except the one "student" who had tried the problem already.
I was able to edit her hw assignment and uncheck the "Source file" option, and then she got the new version. But I was wondering if there is a better way.
Thanks.
Dan
Hi Dan,
I'm a bit confused by your described symptoms. In general, if you have a homework set and change one of the problems, all users will see the changed problem regardless of whether they have started the set or not (which has interesting ramifications if the change makes a previously correct answer incorrect or vice versa). The information about the source file is stored in the global set, not in the user's version.
This is not true, of course, for any user whose set has been manually edited to change the default source file, which is what sounds like is going on here. The other case where changes might not necessarily propagate to user sets is with gateway/quiz assignments, but that doesn't sound like what you're doing here.
But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're seeing?
Gavin
I'm a bit confused by your described symptoms. In general, if you have a homework set and change one of the problems, all users will see the changed problem regardless of whether they have started the set or not (which has interesting ramifications if the change makes a previously correct answer incorrect or vice versa). The information about the source file is stored in the global set, not in the user's version.
This is not true, of course, for any user whose set has been manually edited to change the default source file, which is what sounds like is going on here. The other case where changes might not necessarily propagate to user sets is with gateway/quiz assignments, but that doesn't sound like what you're doing here.
But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're seeing?
Gavin
I had exactly the same experience last spring. I corrected an error in a problem (some of the linear algebra problems are a bit buggy) and all the students saw the new version except the student who had notified me of the error. The problem persisted after several attempts over several days. Are copies of the problems cached (say in the database)? If not, I suppose the only explanation is that the student's browser cached the old version. I believe that I considered this possibility at the time but I am not dead certain that I told the student to reload.
Nope. It's not a cache problem. i was able to verify this. Let me reply to Gavin's post.
Hi Gavin,
I am glad to hear that this is not supposed to happen.
I definitely made a global change, not a change to particular students' assignments. I think (don't exactly remember) I logged in as myself (prof), clicked on the problem, hit 'edit', and then saved the new version to a local file.
This correctly changed all of the students' assignments except the one who had tried it. When I went in to edit her particular copy of the assignment, she (unlike everyone else) had a nonempty string in the Source File field, and the box was checked. I unchecked the box, and now it is working (also the Source File box is empty).
Unfortunately, I do not remember what it said in the Source File box on that assignment.
Any thoughts?
(By the way, I remember the same thing happened when I used WW at Utah a couple of years ago.)
Dan
I am glad to hear that this is not supposed to happen.
I definitely made a global change, not a change to particular students' assignments. I think (don't exactly remember) I logged in as myself (prof), clicked on the problem, hit 'edit', and then saved the new version to a local file.
This correctly changed all of the students' assignments except the one who had tried it. When I went in to edit her particular copy of the assignment, she (unlike everyone else) had a nonempty string in the Source File field, and the box was checked. I unchecked the box, and now it is working (also the Source File box is empty).
Unfortunately, I do not remember what it said in the Source File box on that assignment.
Any thoughts?
(By the way, I remember the same thing happened when I used WW at Utah a couple of years ago.)
Dan
I've run into similar issues around here. It seems that something in the system is filling in user-specific data without a professor changing settings for an individual user.
I just took a look back at some sample data for a course last semester. As far as I know the professor never changed a source file for an individual student, yet I find the following in the database:
Of the 23000 or so records in [course]_problem_user for problems in homework sets (excluding gateway quizzes as in those cases I expect source_file not to be null), there are 1306 records where the source_file is set (to the same as the global value). Looking at these records, the only common bond I can find is that they all have a value of 1 for 'attempted' (yet there are other records which have attempted=1 with source_file being null).
As best as I can figure, something that involves submitting answers is setting this value, but I have been unable to reproduce it on demand.
Does anyone know of anything in the code that would set this value when a student attempts a problem?
I just took a look back at some sample data for a course last semester. As far as I know the professor never changed a source file for an individual student, yet I find the following in the database:
Of the 23000 or so records in [course]_problem_user for problems in homework sets (excluding gateway quizzes as in those cases I expect source_file not to be null), there are 1306 records where the source_file is set (to the same as the global value). Looking at these records, the only common bond I can find is that they all have a value of 1 for 'attempted' (yet there are other records which have attempted=1 with source_file being null).
As best as I can figure, something that involves submitting answers is setting this value, but I have been unable to reproduce it on demand.
Does anyone know of anything in the code that would set this value when a student attempts a problem?
Actually, I am not entirely sure that the student attempted the problem in this case, although she certainly viewed it. She has TA status (we are preparing for next semester), and it looks like maybe she determined that the problem had a bug by checking the "show correct answer" box. I only see one submitted answer, and it was submitted after I fixed the bug. Does the number of attempts reset when a problem is edited?
Dan
Dan