interface to symbolic math. problem generator available
by Zbigniew Fiedorowicz - Saturday, 1 March 2003, 10:22 PM
 

Since I don't know how many of you on this forum also read the General
Developers Forum, I thought I'd post a copy of my announcement here too.

I have developed an interface from Moodle to WeBWorK, a web-based system
for generating and grading mathematics problems (which can also be
used for physics too). The system can generate sophisticated problems
which require symbolic mathematical answers, e.g. e^x sin(4x-2) + ln(5x-2)
and it will analyze and grade such answers accurately.

The interface I have developed allows you to link to such an assignment
from within Moodle. After submitting such an assignment, you can click
on a button to return back to Moodle, and your grades from the WeBWorK
assignment will be automatically imported back into Moodle.

You can also print a hard copy of the WeBWorK assignment by clicking
a link in Moodle.

WeBWorK is open source software from the University of Rochester which
is free for noncommercial use. It is written in Perl and runs under many
varieties of Unix, including Linux and MacOS X. (It currently doesn't
run under Windows.)

You can see the Moodle interface in action by going to the following URL
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/
and logging in as user doe.123 and password doe.123
You can leave your comments on the News Forum in the course.

The interface scripts and installation instructions can be found at
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/

For further information and background, you can look up my posts in the
General Developers Forum. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Zig Fiedorowicz
-------------------------

 Re: interface to symbolic math. problem generator available
by Zbigniew Fiedorowicz - Sunday, 2 March 2003, 08:41 PM
 

I've implemented the following improvements to the Moodle-WeBWorK
interface:
   1) A feedback link from WeBWorK problems to a Moodle discussion
      forum.
   2) A variant of the interface to online WeBWorK problem sets,
      which does NOT return a score back to Moodle. This would
      be an interface to optional just-for-practice WeBWorK
      assignments.
To see this in action, please log into
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle/
with login doe.123 as both username and password. The updated interface
scripts are available for download at
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/moodle_scripts/

I would appreciate your reactions to this interface.

Zig
------------------------------
Hi,

I am contemplating using Moodle for university level mathematics courses.
To do this effectively, I need to be able to integrate Moodle with
web-based symbolic math problem generating systems, specifically WeBWorK
(http://webwork.math.rochester.edu/docs/docs/) and WIMS
(http://wims.unice.fr/wims/). [Our local installations of these systems
are at https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/ and
https://webwork.math.ohio-state.edu/wims/wims.cgi, respectively.]

Now the resource->PROGRAM feature of Moodle 1.8 provides an effective
1-way channel of communication from Moodle to such systems (much better
than what we could achieve with WebCT). What I would like is to have
a channel of communication in the opposite direction. Specifically,
if I direct a student to a problem assignment in WeBWorK or WIMS, I
would like to have these systems be able to report back to Moodle
what score the student achieved on the problem(s). Since Moodle is
open source, this is certainly doable. However, since I am a PHP
amd MySQL newbie, this would be a nontrivial effort on my part.
So I wonder if something in this direction might be in the works for
a future release of Moodle? Or perhaps someone on this forum has
already done some work along these lines?

Zig Fiedorowicz

Reply  

      Re: External quiz/test/problem generation?
      by Martin Dougiamas - Sunday, 23 February 2003, 12:00 AM
       

      I haven't had a good look at these systems yet but I think the best approach here would be to wrap these systems in enough code to make them into Moodle modules. A generic system to receive outside data might be quite complex to build.

      Personally I've got too much to do already for the next year or so but perhaps someone else is interested in working with you on this.

      (This thread should probably be in the Developer's forum)

      Reply  


            Re: External quiz/test/problem generation?
            by Zbigniew Fiedorowicz - Monday, 24 February 2003, 01:48 PM
             

            At Martin's suggestion, I have moved this discussion to the General Developer Forum.

            Zig Fiedorowicz

            Reply