I created a course on the U. of Rochester server this past year, and now that my school (Rollins College) has installed Webwork on one of our servers, I would like to copy the entire course onto our new server. Is there a way to do this without having to do import one set at-a-time?
Thanks in advance,
--Jay
Sure. It's possible to archive the course -- essentially freezing it with all of it's data -- and then unarchive it on the Rollins server. What is the name of your course and the url to the server?
Depending on the software running on the server your course is on I can either do it for you or tell you how to do it yourself.
-- Mike
Thanks for the quick reply, Mike. The name of the course is rollins-mat140, and the url to the Rollins Server is http://webwork.rollins.edu/webwork2/
--Jay
--Jay
Hi,
Your course is actually on the MAA server (not the one at Rochester). It's running a new enough version of WeBWorK so that you can archive and download your course yourself. This is also a useful feature that instructors can use to back up and archive their own course, either during the semester or at the end of the semester to save for future reuse.
Here is how you do it:
Login in to your course as a professor (with professor privileges).
Click on the File Manager link.
Click on the archive this course button.
Reload the webpage by clicking on the File Manager link again.
You will find a file named something like rollins-mat140.tgz in the file window of the file manager page.
Click on the rollins-mat140.tgz name to highlight it and then click Download.
The .tgz file is a compressed file that contains all of the information about your course. You may need to set preferences on your browser so that it is not automatically unpacked. You want to leave it in compressed .tgz format.
You now have a rollins-mat140.tgz file in some Downloads directory on your own computer. This file needs to be given to someone with command line
access to your server. Using sftp or some other file transfer application they will place this file in the webwork/courses directory of the server.
Logging in to the admin course on your server you will see a link for "unarchiving" courses. Choose the rollins-mat140.tgz file from the
scrolling menu and press unarchive. You can give it a new name when
you unarchive it. If the software versions of WeBWorK are not the same on the two servers then you may need to click on the "upgrade courses" link to bring the database of the course up to date. At that point you can start using your course exactly where you left off when it was archived.
I think that is about it. Any instructor can archive and download a course to which they have instructor privileges. Unarchiving a course can only be done by people with command line access to the webwork/courses directory on the server and instructor privileges for the "admin course" on the server.
Let us know how it goes.
-- Mike
Hi,
Mike has given very explicit instructions on how to save and duplicate an entire course. But people reading this thread may only want to save and duplicate their homework assignments. In that case read the Moving Homework Tutorial (http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/MovingHomeworkTutorial) on the wiki.
Arnie
I did this by entering as the instructor and archiving the course (which is what is suggested), and the procedure works. However, if the course is archived by the admin user, the procedure does not allow one to login as the previous instructor. Why is this?
Another observation: when following the procedure and then visiting the classlist editor as admin, one does not see the corresponding instructor of the unarchived course on the list of 'students'.