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Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by tim Payer -
Number of replies: 6
Hello,

I was hoping to get a follow-up on the problem of frequent email notices from Canvas notifications prompted by the Webwork LTI connection.

Currently a few, but not all students are getting 30-40 Canvas email notifications for updated HW scores that have not been caused by the student. That is the student has completed the webwork assignment days or weeks ago but the LTI connection is prompting the student that their score has been updated when no such change has taken place.

This issue was raised two years ago by me and Brian Walton responded that he was working on a solution in the Forum pages. Brian's progress can be seen here:
Unfortunately there has been no follow-up on this issue since and the problem still persists.

Also recommended in the Forum page was to update the course.conf file
With the following lines of code to minimize the frequent updates.
(Even though this action would be taken for the sake of a few annoyed students, not the entire class which is not being notified incessantly)

$LTIGradeOnSubmit = 0; # don't immediately update

$LTIMassUpdateInterval = 86400; #update once a day


Before I go experimenting with my course.conf file could anyone please let me know if there has been any other updates with this issue. And has this issue been addressed in the upcoming update with Version 2.15?

Sincerely, Tim




In reply to tim Payer

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by Nathan Wallach -
I opened an issue in GitHub and tried to merge Brian's proposed fix into the current (WW 2.15) version of lib/WeBWorK/Authen/LTIAdvanced/SubmitGrade.pm and put both his original file and the modified on in the issue.


Since the issue is with Canvas, help testing the patch against a WW 2.15 server running the patched code would help. I don't have access to a Canvas server or much time to try such testing in the next few week, but I could set up an LTI course on a server I control with the patched code installed for you to test against. If that is of interest - please contact me by email.
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by tim Payer -
Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the reply.

I think we would like to try that. We have someone who has loaded older versions of webwork with which to practice with in the past.
With his help we might be able to do some testing.

But what I am not clear on is how to reproduce the error.
This condition is intermittent and only affects a few students, although it is very troublesome for those students.

How could we simulate 50 plus individual students accessing a webwork assignment through a Canvas LTI connection in hopes of catching this glitch?

I am willing to give this a try though. I will contact my tech and get back to you on Monday.

Thanks, Tim
In reply to tim Payer

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by Nathan Wallach -
As I understand it, the problem was caused when "rounding" on the Canvas led to a difference between the recorded score and the newly received score.

Thus, it is probably sufficient to set up a test case where there is a student whose assignment score has an ugly decimal value, so that when an update of the same "accurate" score does not match what the LMS has saved.

Then a full grade sync should trigger the issue before the patch and not after the patch.

I would try an assignment of say 7 problems, where the test student has full credit on 1 problem, (1/7) * 100= 14.2857142857142864755815026 which seems pretty ugly to me and is hopefully ugly enough to trigger the issue.

I recommend first finding a case where the error occurs on your test setup, and then testing the patch.

Using a reasonable small value of $LTIMassUpdateInterval should make it easy to see if the mass grade update is trigger the bug. See: http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/LTI-Advanced_Grading
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by tim Payer -
Yes, Nathan,

We already have two incidences and seed numbers in existing assignments where the entries led to an "ugly" running decimal, 4/29 =0.1379310..., for example.

But we still need a separate wewbork course shell in which to test the problem to try and repeat the error with the same seed # and entry of point values.

You mentioned that we might have access to a server in which to apply this testing?

Tim

In reply to tim Payer

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by Nathan Wallach -
I set up a test course for you on a server where I just installed the proposed patch.
Details in a personal email to you.

Please update here or at https://github.com/openwebwork/webwork2/issues/1028 about whether the fix helps with the bug.
In reply to Nathan Wallach

Re: Follow up on frequent email notification from a Canvas LTI with Webwork

by tim Payer -
Thank you Nathan,

I have installed the suspect problems on the link you sent and intend to use the same inputs and seeds to try and duplicate the error with the latest update of Webwork.

One small hitch is that our canvas tech left early for the weekend and so we may not be able to start testing the LTI connection under V 2.15 until she returns on Monday.

I hope to have some positive results to report on then.

Thanks for your fast reply!

Tim