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"Email instructor": call for collaboration

"Email instructor": call for collaboration

by Valerio De Angelis -
Number of replies: 4
I find the "Email instructor" feature of WebWorK quite effective. I am typically able to answer my students' messages in a short time. Also, I generally don't find this particularly burdensome (even though I may receive a few dozen messages on some days), but there will be days when I just cannot answer all the messages and the students have to wait till the next morning (when I usually do all my catching up). On the other hand, there are some days when I receive no messages at all.

This made me think of the possibility of "spreading out" the task of answering students' messages among several instructors using WeBWorK. All that would be needed is to add another instructor (who can be located anywhere) to my course, and then I would be added as instructor to their course, so that we both receive messages from both courses. On answering a message, the other instructor would receive a copy, so that they know that the message has been answered. This way there would be a higher chance that students in both courses receive faster help.

I would be interested in knowing if this has been tried or discussed before.
I am currently teaching Pre-Calculus (College Algebra and trigonometry) with WebWork, with a total of about 60 students, and I would like to try this type of collaboration with other Pre-Calculus instructors.

In reply to Valerio De Angelis

Re: "Email instructor": call for collaboration

by Joel Trussell -
in the ECE Dept. at NCSU, we routinely give all instructors and teaching assistants in the same course professor privileges. It really helps the response time to the students. The TA are entering grades for other gradebook items, so there are no privacy issues.
In reply to Valerio De Angelis

Re: "Email instructor": call for collaboration

by Andrew Parker -
At New York City College of Technology, we have been working to integrate WeBWorK with our customized WordPress installation in order to create a local Q&A site that makes student questions semi-public. This feature replaces the Email Instructor button.

Any student or instructor may answer an existing question, along the lines of StackExchange or MathOverflow. Student questions are grouped according to the source code for the problem - meaning that different randomizations of the same problem are "grouped" together on the same page... You can have a look at our site by visiting http://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/ol-webwork/ though you will not be able to answer or comment on questions without an account. (Accounts on our OpenLab are limited to those with CityTech email addresses.)

It is still a work in progress, and we're working to integrate students ability to upload screenshots of any written work they've done for their problem.

Eventually, we would like to share this WordPress plugin with the community at large, so your feedback is appreciated.
In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: "Email instructor": call for collaboration

by Valerio De Angelis -
This is very interesting and close to what I had in mind. My idea did not include students providing answers. Is any student in a given course currently able to answer questions, or do they have to first demonstrate that they are able to? In any case, if this project is open to instructors from other colleges I will join it. Thanks for sharing the information.

In reply to Valerio De Angelis

Re: "Email instructor": call for collaboration

by Andrew Parker -
So far, students mainly provide questions, while faculty provide answers. Every once in a while, we get a student answering a question. Our system tags faculty members' avatars so that students know that they're being answered by a professor.

Our system also provides the question-asker with the option of marking a response "this answered my question" - as with StackExchange. We're currently trying to make this part of our students' routine when getting a question answered...

The system also identifies in which section the question-asker is enrolled, and sends an email notification to the professor for that section. Furthermore, it sends email notifications to the asker whenever their question receives a response. Other students are also able to "subscribe" to a question in order to receive a similar email notification.

We're aiming to release our WordPress plug-in this summer, so I'll try to remember to update this thread with the details once we've put it out in the wild...