New to WeBWork and having a lot of trouble with something that should be very simple.
I would like to create a problem set for my students that consists of a dozen problems from the textbook. The statement of each problem will be something like "Problem 17 from Section 2.5.", and then a few answer-blanks.
There must be a way to create a file specifying this information, but so far all the help I have found is here:
http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=7
It doesn't address this particular goal.
I would be obliged for any advice or suggestions.
I have now found the following tutorial, but the process is still cumbersome.
http://webwork.maa.org/w/images/a/ab/WeBWorK_Problem_Authoring_Tutorial.pdf
http://webwork.maa.org/w/images/a/ab/WeBWorK_Problem_Authoring_Tutorial.pdf
The file above gives you the low level basics for programming a problem:
you many more choices at different levels.
You probably don't need quite that much detail for the use case you are proposing.
You can look at the sample problems such as http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/SampleProblem1
In your case the "set up section" might contain:
$answer1 = Compute("-2 x sin(x^2)");
The "text section"
Enter the answer to problem7, section 1: \{ans_rule(50)\}
and the "Answer section"
ANS($answer1->cmp);
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Assuming problem 7 was "find the derivative of cos(x^2)"
this would be all you need to do.
If you want to do a bit more work you could actually type the question in so they don't need to look the question up in the book.
If you want even more variety you can randomize the question so the
question is a bit different for each student -- as described in the sample questions section of the wiki.
This last use case is what was envisioned for using WeBWorK in classes, but
of course people think of all kinds of interesting ways to use WeBWorK that were not envisioned by the original authors.
Hope this helps.
-- Mike
This summer, the MAA along with the WeBWorK team is putting on two PREP workshops that might be of interest to people who are new to WeBWorK. Items such as how to complete the task mentioned above will certainly be covered.
The first is an online-only course "Authoring Effective Homework Problems with WeBWorK" held on Mondays in June and deals with problem authoring starting with the very basics and moving to more advanced techniques. Information on this workshop is available at http://www.maa.org/prep/2013/homework_ww.html .
The second is the course "Building Model Courses for Online Homework with WeBWorK" which focuses more on how to set up a coherent collection of problems sets for a course. This workshop involves a couple of online meetings and culminates with a 3.5 day intensive component at the MAA headquarters in DC. Information on this workshop is available at http://www.maa.org/prep/2013/courses_ww.html .
Registration for any of the MAA PREP workshops is available using the link following the workshop list at http://www.maa.org/prep/2013/ .
JT