| topic started 4/23/2001; 11:44:53 AM last post 4/23/2001; 11:44:53 AM |
4/23/2001; 11:44:53 AM (reads: 793, responses: 0) |
| The current design of WeBWorK seems to require that instructors
who construct their own problem sets have their own logins on the
WeBWorK server, even if they are merely selecting problems from
an existing problem library. Since most instructors (at least
here at OSU) are uncomfortable working within a Unix shell
environment, this places an undue burden on the person(s) who
administer the WeBWorK system. It would be nice if there were
a web interface for instructors to build their own problem
sets from an existing library of problems. Here is a suggestion for such an interface. There should be a template course constructed ahead of time for each WeBWorK course, with all the problems already built. The instructor of a WeBWorK course would log in as a practice user in the template course and print out hard copies of relevant problem sets and look through them, selecting problems he likes. Then the instructor would log into his own course. In the "Build Problem Set" page there would be an additional button labelled something like "Construct new problem set from template library" Upon clicking this button, the instructor would be presented with a list of checkboxes labelled by all the problem assignments in the template course. Upon checking off those which contain the relevant problems and clicking "Continue", the instructor would then be presented with a list of small input boxes labelled by all the problems in the already selected sets. The instructor would enter the numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., n next to those problems he selected, indicating how the problems should be numbered on his version of the assignment. Upon clicking "OK", the script should create a new subdirectory in the templates directory and copy the selected problems into that directory. Also an appropriate problem set definition file would be created and opened for editing. Zig Fiedorowicz |