Hello, I was wondering why an open-end essay type of math question would not have the option of a student uploading his/her scanned handwritten solution.
The reason it does not is that it is not implemented. There is some recent work toward this end. There is a discussion in these forums about this, but I can't find it right now.
I'm somewhat curious as to the scenarios that are leading people to wish to do this through WeBWorK. I get the desire to minimize the number of platforms we expose students to.
But WeBWorK is not really meant to be an LMS. And every LMS I've used has a nice assignment function that lets you do this. (Maybe some places still do not use an LMS?) Usually you can even generate many versions of a question, upload them, and have the LMS choose one at random for each student.
The only downside is that the grading workflow is often tedious, which is why people are willing to give money to companies like Crowdmark.
But I can't imagine WeBWorK including a streamlined grading workflow for scanned work without a massive amount of development work. (This really amounts to building a brand new product and then grafting it onto WeBWorK, no?)
But WeBWorK is not really meant to be an LMS. And every LMS I've used has a nice assignment function that lets you do this. (Maybe some places still do not use an LMS?) Usually you can even generate many versions of a question, upload them, and have the LMS choose one at random for each student.
The only downside is that the grading workflow is often tedious, which is why people are willing to give money to companies like Crowdmark.
But I can't imagine WeBWorK including a streamlined grading workflow for scanned work without a massive amount of development work. (This really amounts to building a brand new product and then grafting it onto WeBWorK, no?)
Our LMS is BrightSpace (D2L) which has this functionality if one uses an assignment submission folder. Unfortunately, this does not work well for a longer comprehensive exam, such as a final or even a midterm as it assumes that the whole exam is made available to students at the same time and opens the exam wide open to contract cheating or unauthorized group work. It is much better to implement such an exam as a quiz where questions are randomized and students are allowed to move from one question to the next one but not back. Thus a student will read a question and if it requires written solution, it is easy and natural to solve it on paper, scan and upload, then move to the next one. Ideally, it should be possible to annotate the uploaded solution in place, then using a tablet and a pen will make marking and providing feedback very easy (this is a functionality that Crowdmark has).
There is an earlier thread here:
https://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4444#p14316
I would love to have this functionality for setting exams in webworks, so the students can upload their rough work and I can give them partial credit.
What I wrote is clearly the wrong way to do it, and doesn't seem to work on files bigger than about 500K, for reasons that aren't clear to me...
https://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4444#p14316
I would love to have this functionality for setting exams in webworks, so the students can upload their rough work and I can give them partial credit.
What I wrote is clearly the wrong way to do it, and doesn't seem to work on files bigger than about 500K, for reasons that aren't clear to me...