Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: Alternative to Web CT?]

[Jan Hlavacek <jhlavacek@sf.edu>]

I wrote a list of ideas about how WIMS could be modified in order to
make it more usefull for online classes.  Like Larry, I am using WIMS as
a supplement in some of my classes, and I would like to use it more.
Anyway, I compiled this list last night, I am not sure this is the best
worum to post it, maybe WIMS discusion board would be better, on the
other hand I can get some comments from people on this list, which would
be great.

General remarks:

To make WIMS more usable for online classes, I thing the following changes and
additions are necessary: 

1.  from the student's side
    
    -	Users would have to be separated from classes. Currently user can exist
	only inside a class. If the same student want to take another class,
	he/she has to go through all the registration again. If a student takes
	several classes at once, there is no way to display grades/progress
	information/information about new assignments/messages from instructors
	etc. from all her classes on one page. She has to go to each class's
	page, type in her password for each of the classes and get this
	information for each class separately. 

	There should be a user page, which would contain links to all of the
	user's classes, information about grades, news from instructors, a way
	to register for new classes etc. Kind of like a portal.

    -	Provide a way for editing user info: suppose a students last name,
	email address or whatnot changes in the middle of the semester. Right
	now there is no way to change these things apart from asking the site
	administrator to edit them manually.  Users can change their passwords,
	but that's all.

    -	Perhaps a way of saving preferences without having to save a bookmark
	would be nice, too.  That could be part of the user info editor.

2.  From the teacher's side:

    -	The class page needs to be more flexible, and contain more material
	besides worksheets: links to external resources, comments, pictures.
	Ideally the class page should be just a regular html page, maybe just
	the body without header and footer (which would be automatically
	appended by wims). This html file would include links to worksheets.
	The current format (simple list of worksheets) could still be present,
	and students could switch to it if they quickly want to find which work
	to do and what is their progress.  Or maybe some sort of secure phtml
	subset could be used. 

    -	There should also be a way to include instructors comments to the
	individual works. Maybe the data in each worksheet could contain extra
	field for each work - the instructor's comment - and students could
	view this comment using a navigation button from the work's page. 

    -	There should be a way to create "canned classes". I often teach the
	same class again next semester, and other instructors teach the same
	class, and I would like to use the same worksheets, with possible
	modifications. I think (although I've never tried it) I can save raw 
	data for all my worksheets and them upload them to the server if I want
	to reuse them. That is too difficult. What I would like to see is a
	"canned class" containing all the class page, worksheet, OEM exercises
	and everything, but inactive, and with no expiration dates. Each
	instructor would then create an instance of this class, that is a
	complete copy of this class, but with a class expiration date. They can
	then modify the material and worksheets, and activate them.  

	Ideally there would be some way of merging some of the modifications
	back to the "can". If not, you could always edit the "can" manually.
	Either way, you could create and release entire classes under the GPL
	or similar license.

    -	Grades management would have to be improved. Ideally you would have
	basically a spreadsheet where the rows (one of each student) and some
	of the columns would be created and filled in by WIMS, and other
	columns could be added by the instructor, who would also specify the
	formulas for computing the final grade.

Small but important details about the user interface:

1.  Information about progress should be more prominent, right now it is not
    easy to find (it is at the very bottom of the exercise page, in a very
    small font).

2.  The progress information should be more consistent. For each work, there is
    info about how many points you got etc, but there is no such info on the
    bottom of a worksheet (percentage, average, ...).  You have to quit the
    worksheet to get that info. 

3.  The "sessions" should be more clear. Sometimes it is not obvious that
    students have to finish the session (i.e. repeat the exercise several
    times) before getting a score.  

4.  The "navigation buttons" should be more clear: perhaps "return to
    worksheet" instead of just "worksheet", the "worksheet" button should come
    before "home of the class" (I suppose that students will usually want to do
    other exercises on the same worksheet, rather than to go to home of the
    class and work on different worksheet). Why is "quit the class" button on
    the top of the page and not on the bottom? 

5.  On each work's page there should be buttons "go to next work" and "go to
    previous work", unless it is the last/first work in the worksheet.

    I think the navigation buttons should be:

    Next work | Return to worksheet | Previous work | Home of the class | Quit the class

    where "Next work" or "Previous work" would be an inactive for the last
    resp. first work on a sheet.

6.  Should students have access to the "Intro/config" button? I think that if
    they have the access, it should be made very clear at the beginning of the
    intro/config page that changing configuration will result in disabled
    scoring. 

Most of these changes should be fairly easy to do, some of them can be done
just by editing homeref_user.phtml.  Perhaps the hardest one will be the
Next/Previous work buttons.

A suggestion for OEF:

I think there should be a \feedback command in OEF. I would imagine the
following syntax:

    \feedback{condition}{Text}

where the condition would be a testing condition and the Test would be a
feedback information displayed if the condition is met. Examples:

    when adding fractions 3/5 + 2/7

    \feedback{\ans=5/12}{Oops, you cannot just add numerators and
	    denominators...}

    when solving quadratic equation ax^2 + bx + c = 0

    \feedback{\ans1=((\b-sqrt(\d))/2a) or \ans1=((\b+sqrt(\d))/2a)}{It seems to
    me that you have some wrong signs in your quadratic formula. It should be
    -b\pm sqrt(d) ..., not b\pm sqrt(d)...}

That way you could point out the most typical mistakes students make.

An idea about graphics:

Would it be possible to use Metapost to include graphics in WIMS?  It would
work basically the same way as TeX insertions work now - you would type in some
(subset of) metapost code (possibly using some metapost macros to make it
easier to do common things like graphs of functions), and wims would run that
through mpost, the resulting "postscript" code through LaTeX and dvips (to sort
out possible font problems), and finally use gs to generate gif file for
inclusion in the page.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2001 at 08:15:26AM -0700, Prevett, Larry wrote:
> I have some experience using WIMS materials as 
> *supplements* to math classes, but not online 
> courses. So I've tried to think carefully about
> what would be useful to me as a math teacher to go from
> supplementary materials to a full-blown online course.
> 
> There are 3 main components I am thinking of:
> 
> 1. Developing the course materials.
> 
> I would need to interface larger document structures 
> with WIMS. Since I would have to construct the course
> materials in the context of all my other teaching
> responsibilities, I would not be able to find a large
> period of time to work on the course. The development
> process would go something like this: I would finish
> a lecture, then go to the computer and type some new 
> content while the ideas are fresh. I would use latex,
> latex2html, php and local (or remote?) databases
> (postgres or mysql) to construct core content.
> 
> 2. Taking advantage of a large number of modular
> resources while I am developing the course that
> work well in a Unix environment.
> 
> The more modular the better - that is the Unix way.
> I would rather invest in a methodology that allowed
> me to take advantage of all the great Unix tools
> already available, rather than in a monolithic,
> proprietary format.
> 
> I would pull in interactive exercises and pop-up
> tools from WIMS as needed. I would test and edit the 
> materials as time allowed. If I had multimedia files,
> I would install those locally (or somehow separate 
> from the server hosting the course) and access them
> using links in the web pages. Over the period of a  
> semester I would have the core content for my course
> constructed.
> 
> 3. Installing the course materials in a
> 'course environment' on a server.
> 
> That would provide automatic scoring of exercises and 
> manually entered grades, message boards, 
> conferencing/collaboration tools, maybe a 'whiteboard' 
> type application if I had access to a fast connection.
> 
> L. Prevett
> Mathematics Instructor
> Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, US
> prevettl@cochise.cc.az.us

-- 
Jan Hlavacek                                            (219) 434-7566
Department of Mathematics                             Jhlavacek@sf.edu
University of Saint Francis               http://www.sf.edu/jhlavacek/