The sandbox-courses used by participants in my 19-Jan-2011 workshop were created on my main server and will persist during our Spring semester. (One part of my workshop outline, http://lennes.math.umt.edu/workshop/8.html, has some more info about that.)
I began my preparation for that WeBWorK demo/outreach workshop by learning what materials were already available.
Since new consultants did not receive a flash drive with Consultant stuff at the Jan 2011 training workshop, I downloaded the LiveDVD [http://webwork.maa.org/ww-downloads/WW2.4_Ubuntu10.04_32bit_Consultant_LiveDVD.iso], confirmed its md5 signature, and mounted it in a virtual machine on my Mac.
To discover all special items in the maaDemo courses, I created new courses fromModel and fromMaaSample, then did a recursive diff to compare their contents. Extra (or changed) stuff in the fromMaaSample course's template directory:
course_info.txt revised
local empty directory
login_info.txt
maa.lst
setCalculus_I.def
setCalculus_II.def
setDemo.def change of dates, cosmetic reformatting (problems unchanged)
setVarious.def
student.lst
Logging into one of the maa1## demo courses as profa showed assignments:
0 closed, answers available
Demo open, due 01/01/2014
Orientation open, due 04/04/2015
Calculus I open, due 07/01/2015
I uploaded a copy of the original maa_sample master course to the Resource section [http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/data/view.php?id=133] of the Consultants' Course as MaaSample-2010-07-25.tgz
For my workshop, I added preliminary versions of setCollegeAlgebra.def and setPrecalculus.def, then began with users (2 prof, 2 student, 4 guest) loaded from my classlist-start.lst and assignments:
Demo closed, answers available
Precalculus open, due 2 weeks after workshop
Orientation open, due 04/04/2015
Calculus I open, due 07/01/2015
After the workshop, I wrote some header files and made minor changes to some DEFs (load a new header file, a cap on number of tries for a few problems). I have uploaded this collection of files as MaaSample-2011-03.tgz
NOTE: my Feb-11 posting of samplers for CollegeAlgebra and Precalculus supersedes the preliminary versions included here. (I did not discard a snapshot of that preliminary stuff because I'm interested in understanding how my thinking evolves.)
Notes about some changes not included here:
a) Orientation header, and a few of its items, are specific to the Union theme. Although I made some ad hoc changes for an active course, I suspect it may be useful to uncouple the parts applying to WeBWorK in general from the few items dealing with a particular theme.
b) The Demo set needs revision. Its header is too long, has outdated links, and refers to problems which are not currently loaded. Furthermore, one problem requires Capa to be installed and another references a Java applet which is no longer available. I suspect at least one of the problems using the Image_and_Cursor applet can be fixed so that cursor coordinates are not obscured. I opened Demo for my workshop because I like most of its problems (and would have handled an error for 6 or 9 by commenting about the necessity for an instructor to do some checking before making an assignment).