Could you provide a better explanation of this?
I would like to do the same, have a set header (or equivalent) for on-screen gateway quiz. Nowhere in my course filespace is there a file named <code>gateway.template</code>.
I am also confused as to the logic of why there is no set header for an on-screen quiz? Makes no sense to me.
The gateway.template is part of the theme, which is stored in /opt/webwork/webwork2/htdocs/themes/[theme_name]. These themes are global to the WeBWorK server, but different themes can be used in different courses. To use Larry's workaround you would probably want to make a copy of the theme you are using, then make the appropriate edits to gateway.template, then change your course to use the new theme (which can be done from the Course Configuration page).
I don't know why there is no screen set header for gateway quizzes, as there is often quiz specific information that you may wish to communicate to the students. In fact, for quizzes it would be nice to have an intermediate page that appeared when they clicked on the quiz that gave them information such as the time limit, any header information, and asked them if they were ready to begin.
One place you can put quiz instructions is in the Set Description box. This information will be displayed if a student mouses over the quiz link. This is definitely easy to miss, but it does give you somewhere to put such instructions.
I just mention this thread and the suggestions in the "Feature requests for Gateway quizzes" tracking issue on GitHub: https://github.com/openwebwork/webwork2/issues/1156
I am toying with the idea of creating a dummy first problem that would contain my set text, and a pledge of academic integrity, but this seems like totally unnecessary workaround. The introductory text, explaining the rules of the exam is essential, and long-term should be made to show before the countdown timer is started.
I have never used Set Description before, and so the students may well miss it. But thanks for this suggestion, this is the only realistic short-term solution. Except no formatting and no links in that.
Another option is to temporarily change the "Course Info" box which is easy to edit on the Homework Sets Page. The students will see this before they click on the gateway quiz/test. You can code that in html and if you've been using the default course info the students will likely notice that it has changed if you add more text or add some html color to the text.
Another thing that some of our instructors are doing is using the conditional release feature to mimic this behaviour.
They create a regular homework set with one question containing the instructions and academic integrity statement, and require a grade of 100% on this before students can start the actual exam.
I wish I had more time to test this, as I have never done these conditional assignments, the exam is in two days, and I do not want to screw the students over by messing it up.
(Can you email me a sample .def file? :-)