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Testing new problems

Testing new problems

by Lijuan Cao -
Number of replies: 8

Hello, 

I am new to WeBWork and I am working on building questions and homework sets for my discrete math class next semester. I was able to make some new problems and added them to my homework sets. The problems worked fine on my end. But since I used a lot of randomization, I want to find out if there is a way to test them more extensively. 

Also, I want to ask if there is a way to turn off the equation editor and hide the pencil next to the answer blocks. Thank you.

In reply to Lijuan Cao

Re: Testing new problems

by Gavin LaRose -
Hi Lijuan,
The idea of a robust problem tester has been floated for quite a long time, but to my knowledge there isn't one in existence. The two things that I do routinely to test whether randomization is going to cause trouble with some versions of the problems are to try them systematically with the different possible randomizations, e.g., by setting variable values to subsequent values in the allowed randomization ($n = random(1,5,1); $n = 1;); and to simply force different randomizations by inserting additional random calls at the top of the problem file.

I expect that you can turn off the equation editor in Course Configuration -> PG - Problem Display/Answer Checking.

Gavin
In reply to Gavin LaRose

Re: Testing new problems

by Lijuan Cao -
Hi Gavin,

Thanks for your reply. I will test the problems using your method.

I was able to turn off the equation editor but for some reason I still see the pencil next to the answer box, as can be seen from the picture below. Is there a way to turn off the pencil too?  

Pencil

Lijuan
In reply to Lijuan Cao

Re: Testing new problems

by Glenn Rice -

As far as I know the pencil picture is not put in by any of the answer entry assist methods provided by webwork.  Do you have some other javascript injected into the page (by an extension or something), or something else occurring on your server that might be doing this?

In reply to Glenn Rice

Re: Testing new problems

by Lijuan Cao -
Thank you. Our system admin resolved the issue today. In the course.config file, the DragMath option was turned on with the following line:

$pg{specialPGEnvironmentVars}{DragMath} = 1;

The pencils are gone after removing this line.
In reply to Lijuan Cao

Re: Testing new problems

by Glenn Rice -

Ahh, yeah.  That one.  Drag math support has been dropped, and most of the code for that has been removed from the WeBWorK code base.  In the next release it won't matter if that line is in the settings, it will be ignored.  Version 2.15 still has some remnants though.

In reply to Glenn Rice

Re: Testing new problems

by Lijuan Cao -
That's great. On a separate note, are there any tools that allow students to enter set and logical operators? We are currently using WeBWorK 2.12 and it only has an option for MathView, but MathView does not seem to include these operators. Thanks.
In reply to Lijuan Cao

Re: Testing new problems

by Robert Mařík -

A solution which works for me is to enable "Show me another" feature as many times I need and then I keep clicking the corresponding button to see various versions, including hints or solutions.

I edit directly the files on the server (do not use editor in browser). Thus it is sufficient to save the changes and have another look at the result of "Show me another".

With regards

Robert


In reply to Robert Mařík

Re: Testing new problems

by Danny Glin -

If I want to test several versions of a problem, here is what I do:

From the Library Browser click the eye icon next to the problem to try it.  When you do so, you are taken to a page containing the problem.  The last argument in the URL for that page is the problem seed.  You can change that to a different value to get a new version of the problem.