WeBWorK Main Forum

Creating multiple sections of a single course

Creating multiple sections of a single course

by David Royster -
Number of replies: 2

We are implementing WeBWorK this fall. I have read what I can find (and I won't claim that my search parameters were optimal) about creating one course (which we have done on the MAA host) and then putting students in different sections. That much is okay.

The next question has to do with instructors and TA's and me, the course admin.

We have 32 sections of one course. Each instructor is assigned to 4 sections and each ta is assigned to 2 sections.

1) If I create an instructor/professor or ta and assign that person to section A, will that person only be able to see and interact with section A?

2) If true, then when a student generates an email for help, does that email go only to the instructor and ta for that section?

3) If the above is true, does that mean that I - who will not be assigned to any section - will NOT be able to access any of the student accounts unless I assign myself to all sections?

I am willing to accept any pointers about setting up this course. I do not have complete administrative rights, only the instructor rights to the overall course.

Thanks,

droyster

In reply to David Royster

Re: Creating multiple sections of a single course

by Jason Aubrey -
Hi -

1) No, that person will be able to see and interact with all sections of the course. That is, they will have the same permissions with respect to any student record regardless of section numbers. You can restrict permissions of ta's for example, but not by section number.

2) If you set "$feeback_by_section = 1;" in your course.conf file, then feedback email from students will go to ta's and prof's who are also in that section, and feedback email will not go to ta's or profs in different sections. However,

3) if you or any other ta or prof are added to the list of email addresses in 
$mail{feedbackRecipients} = ['email@ddress.edu'];
then you will get all feedback email regardless of the section it comes from.

This all works pretty much how I've wanted it to work, except that you can only specify one section number per user. So, to handle instructors in multiple sections I typically create fake users for those instructors for the additional sections.

In my case, I usually have instructors who teach 2 sections each. So, I'll create a real instructor user for the first section and a fake instructor user for the second section. The fake user has to have a different login name but can have the same email address.

Hope this helps,
Jason
In reply to Jason Aubrey

Re: Creating multiple sections of a single course

by Dick Lane -
A 2011-January posting by Mike Schroeder
        http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2396&parent=4835
describes a variant of the procedure outlined by Jason.

a) spelling correction:  $feedback_by_section
  [usually set to 0 (false) in global.conf, can be overridden in course.conf (which you can edit using the File Manager in Instructor Tools, the file is one level up from the templates directory)]

b) assign instructor or ta to multiple sections, e.g., "001,002,003"
  [I have not tried part (b) and, prior to rereading Mike's post today, my belief matched Jason's "one section number per user".]


David --- If all instructors have professor status in the course, then each has full access to create assignments for the course.

Jason --- how do you coordinate assignment creation for a course with several instructors?

dick