I've gotten the following message from an instructor about a student's difficulty in using webwork. I have not heard of any of our other students having this problem. I've tried logging in as the student and doing a problem, but the system does indeed report the attempts and the correct scoring. Does anyone have an idea of what is going on? Or, do you have a suggestion on how to troubleshoot it?
I have a student who claims to be doing the WebWork, but then when he goes back the computer has 0 recorded for him. I saw it happen to him on set 1, and then something happened and it worked for sets 0 and 1. But now the same thing has happened to him on sets 2 and 3. I really don't know what's wrong, so I don't know how to tell him to fix it. It seems to be a problem that only affects him. He says something is strange and wrong between the network and his computer, but I don't think that could be it, because he submits the problems, gets 100%, which means that on the web they had to be graded and recorded as 100%, and then later the scores, and even the attempts, vanish. It's bizarre.
Hi Jeff,
Do you have guest logins enabled for the course, and is there any chance that the student could be accidentally working the homework as a guest user rather than through the correct login? I know we've had some trouble with that.
Gavin
Do you have guest logins enabled for the course, and is there any chance that the student could be accidentally working the homework as a guest user rather than through the correct login? I know we've had some trouble with that.
Gavin
Thanks for the reply, Gavin. I double checked for guest accounts, and we do not have any.
This student is claiming some sort of network problem. I've asked if he had trouble both off and on campus, but have not heard back from him.
This student is claiming some sort of network problem. I've asked if he had trouble both off and on campus, but have not heard back from him.
Jeff,
I'll add a little to Gavin's post. Another thing that happens here is that students will frequently (~5-10 per semester) try to submit assignments after the closing date. Since WW gives them feedback about the correctness of their answers, they assume the HW has been accepted and recorded, which it hasn't since the set is closed.
WW is very robust in its recording of answers. The methodology is considerably fault tolerant in that if the server responds with a graded answer and a value for the problem during a time in which it is allowed to be recorded, the answer gets stored in the database. You'd get an error otherwise, so I tend to suspect something else until I see it happening with my own eyes.
My approach in these cases is to check both the course logs in /opt/webwork/<course>/logs (or wherever you keep your courses and logs; this is in WW2.4.x) to verify the timing of both the student login and the answer submission. I then compare these to the apache logs which I grep for the user and HW set in question to try to establish a timeline of activity as well as some idea of what they were doing at that time.
-Eddie
I'll add a little to Gavin's post. Another thing that happens here is that students will frequently (~5-10 per semester) try to submit assignments after the closing date. Since WW gives them feedback about the correctness of their answers, they assume the HW has been accepted and recorded, which it hasn't since the set is closed.
WW is very robust in its recording of answers. The methodology is considerably fault tolerant in that if the server responds with a graded answer and a value for the problem during a time in which it is allowed to be recorded, the answer gets stored in the database. You'd get an error otherwise, so I tend to suspect something else until I see it happening with my own eyes.
My approach in these cases is to check both the course logs in /opt/webwork/<course>/logs (or wherever you keep your courses and logs; this is in WW2.4.x) to verify the timing of both the student login and the answer submission. I then compare these to the apache logs which I grep for the user and HW set in question to try to establish a timeline of activity as well as some idea of what they were doing at that time.
-Eddie
We've had similar problems here, although I don't know the exact details. One example seems to have been triggered by reopening a problem set, if that helps. Also, students occasionally lose the "Submit Answer" button even when they haven't reached the limit of their attempts. I know that one can arrange this deliberately, but it seems to be happening accidentally. Any suggestions anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.
-- Robert
-- Robert
This is probably a browser cache issue. The browser is probably displaying a version of the page from before the student did the problem. Suggest that the student reload the page; I suspect the score will be updated at that point.
Davide
Davide