WeBWorK Main Forum

WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Andrew Parker -
Number of replies: 5

WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help


We are delighted to announce the release of WeBWorK Q&A, a free WordPress plugin that creates a community forum where students can get help with WeBWorK problems.

WeBWorK Q&A brings together two powerful free and open source platforms: WordPress’s publishing software powers 42% of sites on the internet, and WeBWorK is a widely-adopted platform used to give online assignments in math and science courses. 

WeBWorK provides an option for students to email their professor if they have a question about a WeBWorK problem. However, this one-on-one communication model leaves students isolated from their peers and can result in the instructor answering the same question dozens of times. 

WeBWorK Q&A helps students learn from one another by sharing their questions in a community space. Instead of working on assignments alone or interacting only with their instructor, students using WeBWorK Q&A can become part of a community of learners, working together on the same material and offering mutual support. Questions can be answered by faculty, other students, tutors, and so on, enabling faster response times. 


Features:

  • Ask questions anonymously

  • Use LaTeX in questions and responses

  • Include images in questions and responses

  • Browse and filter questions

  • Like helpful answers 

  • Subscribe to or unsubscribe from email notifications about a question

  • Accessible, responsive recommended theme


WeBWorK Q&A was created by a team based at City Tech (New York City College of Technology, City University of New York) and in partnership with The OpenLab at City Tech, an open platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration. 


The project was conducted as part of Opening Gateways, a City Tech initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program to support student success in mathematics courses that serve as gateways to STEM disciplines.


Visit the project website for more information.
In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Sean Fitzpatrick -
Hi Andrew,
This looks really cool. But I was wondering if there could be some documentation for those who have never used Wordpress. My only experience with making websites is writing HTML (and occasionally CSS) and then putting it on a server. I've never tried any of the fancier tools.

My main question would be: is Wordpress only available through hosting? Or is it something you can install on a server and run yourself? I didn't see anything on the Wordpress site about downloading software.

If it has to be hosted, then we would lose all the privacy benefits of running everything on local servers, and for a high volume forum I am guessing this does not come for free.
How much do you have to pay to run a forum on Wordpress? (Assume around 1000 users.)
In reply to Sean Fitzpatrick

Re: WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Andrew Parker -
Full disclosure, I have not installed or attempted to maintain a WordPress installation. Our institution handles the adminstration of CBOX-OL, a version of Commons in a Box, which implements WordPress.

Regarding installation of WordPress, a quick google search returned these instructions.

However, my understanding is that it is frequently found preferable to use a site host that supports WordPress on your behalf (there are many). I also have the impression that WordPress is generally pretty light-weight, and student load will not be nearly as impactful as it is with the WeBWorK web service.

Regarding privacy, WordPress can be permissioned, so posting content requires an account. The Q&A plugin also supports students who wish to post their questions anonymously. In such a situation, the student's WeBWorK account name is only revealed by an email sent to the WeBWorK course instructor(s). Recipients of this email are determined by the permission level in WeBWorK for 'receive_feedback' (default: ta, can be overridden in course.conf).

I hope that addresses your concern, I'm not sure what privacy you're anticipating to lose with this plugin.

In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Sean Fitzpatrick -

The rules at our campus (which I suspect are not uncommon) is that use of any external tool that shares student information, including email addresses, has to undergo a full privacy audit by our legal department and InfoSec team before it can be used in a classroom.

If this is linked to WeBWorK (which, in turn, is linked to the LMS) then students clicking on the help link will be sharing their email with the Q&A forum. If this is hosted by WordPress, whose servers are presumably in the USA, we could get ourselves in trouble.

There's also very little chance that my institution would cover the hosting costs, so I'd be paying out of my own pocket for whatever fees they charge.

Right now we use Campuswire. It's also in the USA, but it's free to use, and their privacy and data ownership policies were acceptable. And even with that, we have to make usage voluntary, and allow students the option to sign up with a "burner" email address so that they aren't required to expose their university identity to a foreign company.

In reply to Sean Fitzpatrick

Re: WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Andrew Parker -
Well, that does seem like a lot to deal with. I realize that you're not responsible for performing the audits, but perhaps some further clarification would be useful:

  • the Q&A forum will display the user's WordPress account name, but that is the only user-related information that is used publicly (or even stored in the database).
  • the Q&A forum allows students to post anonymously, in which case the WordPress account name is not displayed
  • when a student navigates from WeBWorK to the Q&A site, WordPress is sent information about the student (name + email address), and also receives a list of email addresses of those who should be notified if the student posts a question.
    • if the student asks a question, WordPress sends notification emails to the list of those who should be notified, as provided by WeBWorK. After this point, no record of the email addresses or names is retained on WordPress.
    • if the student closes the Q&A tab without asking a question, all information is discarded. The student must follow the link to the Q&A site from WeBWorK anew if they want to post a question.

TL;DR - Neither WordPress nor the Q&A plugin retain any information about users who post questions. I would presume that asking questions is purely voluntary, and participants are allowed to remain anonymous.

Postamble: I would assume you could find WordPress hosting local to Canada, no? But maybe the best solution here is local hosting -- it didn't seem to be all that complicated... Anyway, if you try it, I'd like to know how it goes!
In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: WeBWorK Q&A: New WordPress plugin for community-powered Math homework help

by Danny Glin -

It's worth checking with your institution to see if they already have a WordPress environment set up.  If they do, then they've already figured out how to handle student accounts.

In my case, such a thing exists, and the IT people were willing to install the Q&A plugin and the base theme, though they wouldn't install the WeBWorK-specific theme because it is not published on wordpress.org as an official theme.  I haven't had a chance to try it out yet so I can't report on how well it works in our environment.