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how to prevent students from finding the correct answers before the answer date

how to prevent students from finding the correct answers before the answer date

by Dan Christensen -
Number of replies: 2

I'm preparing homework sets that are worth a fair number of marks for the students.  (We are reducing exam weight due to remote proctoring.)  I have decided to only give the students one attempt per question, and have configured this.  I like that WeBWorK immediately lets them know whether they got the answer correct or not.  However, after their one attempt, they can continue to put answers in and click the "Check Answers" button, which means that even if they got the question wrong, they can figure out the correct answer and share this information with other students.

I would like to disable this Check Answers feature, at least until the answer date has passed.  Is this possible?

It seems to me that otherwise the answer date feature isn't really limiting them very much.

I'm using standard Homework sets.  ww_version: WeBWorK-2.14 | pg_version PG-2.14.  Let me know if I can provide any other information.

I googled this without any luck.  Thanks for any tips.

Dan

In reply to Dan Christensen

Re: how to prevent students from finding the correct answers before the answer date

by Alex Jordan -

There is a hash, %permissionLevels, which has these keys (among many others):
        check_answers_before_open_date                  => "ta",
        check_answers_after_open_date_with_attempts     => "guest",
        check_answers_after_open_date_without_attempts  => "guest",
        check_answers_after_due_date                    => "guest",
        check_answers_after_answer_date                 => "guest",
        can_check_and_submit_answers                    => "ta",

(These are set in defaults.conf, with these default values.)

So if you can edit course.conf, you could set all these (where some may be unnecessary in your situation):

$permissionLevels{check_answers_after_open_date_with_attempts} = "ta";
$permissionLevels{check_answers_after_open_date_without_attempts} = "ta";
$permissionLevels{check_answers_after_due_date} = "ta";

It may be the case that only an admin level account can edit your course.conf file. There is a security measure in place to prevent an instructor from accidentally doing something bad like locking themselves out of their own course.


In reply to Alex Jordan

Re: how to prevent students from finding the correct answers before the answer date

by Dan Christensen -

Thanks, that seems to do exactly what I need!

Dan