| Archiving a class | topic started 12/20/2001; 3:09:08 PM last post 12/27/2001; 5:20:25 PM |
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12/27/2001; 5:20:25 PM (reads: 1001, responses: 0) |
| I'm
not sure about a standard way but here is what we do at Rochester.
Basically the set definition files define the course and these should
be saved. The totals file contains all the scoring information that I
use to compute grades and this should be saved in a secure location.
How much or little you want to save beyond that depends on your
circumstances. At Rochester we keep courses active (with altered names)
so that they can be accessed from the web for a year or so. We keep
keep their basic structure intact (so they can be copied) forever. A. First I make a paper copy of all problem sets (with .pg file names) and put them in a folder with paper copies of the syllabus, etc. Giving someone a xerox copy of this is an easy way to show them what was done. B. Next I clean things up a bit (you can skip this step if you want). 1. From the prof/house keeping section, compress the data base. 2. Remove everything from under the course tmp directory. 3. In the DATA directory remove all .sco files. These are used mostly for a backup failsafe scoring method --- keep them if you really want to save the extra data they contain. 4. In the scoring directory, I remove everything except for the final totals file. I can always score things again if I want the extra data. 5. Remove all the files under the logs directory. Mostly these are used for reconstructing corrupted databases. 6. Remove backup copies remaining scoring files, classlist files, etc. C. Now I move the course to a new location. I'll assume I am working with mth161, a course we teach every semester. 1. Enter the command mv mth161 fall01-mth161 to move the mth161 directory to the fall01-mth161 directory. ASIDE. Since we will teach mth161 again and it will be quite similar to the previous version, before doing anything else I enter the commands mkdir mth161 cp -rp fall01-mth161/* mth161/ to use in setting up the new mth161 course. I also create a subdirectory of mth161/templates called old_set_defs and mv all the set definition files from mth161/templates into it. 2. Next edit the files .../fall01-mth161/webworkCourse.ph .../fall01-mth161/html/index.html replacing all occurances of "mth161" by "fall01-mth161" Also edit .../fall01-mth161/webworkCourse.ph near the bottom correcting the names of the databases. E.g. change "${classID}_webwork_DB" to "mth161_webwork_DB" since the new classID is fall01-mth161 but we didn't rename the database. Of course, alternately, you could rename the four databases. 3. In your webserver's document root enter a link called fall01-mth161 pointing to fall01-mth161/html in analogy with the link for mth161. 4. If you have put the course's tmp directory in a non standard location (as we do at Rochester) you either have to create that tmp directory or edit the approiate data in .../fall01-mth161/webworkCourse.ph. 5. At this point professors and students can log into from the web fall01-mth161 and it will look identical to the old mth161. 6. You may or may not want to allow web access --- it's up to you. Obviouly follow the above directions only if you want to. You may want to have a less obvious URL than fall01-mth161. 7. Change the permission on the set definition files to say 644 so they are world readable (and copyable). D. After a few weeks or months (when we are sure everyone is really finished using the course and professors have saved any scoing data they want to save), we remove all the scoring data, all the databases, and the classlist file. We create a very short classlist file containing Pizer and Gage and a few practice users. We then rebuild all the sets in the course. That way people can see what the course looked like but students can no longer login. E. After about a year we remove the link to the course in the webserver's document root which means the course can no longer be accessed over the web. But people can always copy the course by copying the set definition files. |