Mathematics Department
- BYU Home
- College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
- Mathematics Department
- Steven M. McKay, Ph.D.
WebWorK for Instructors
What is WebWorK?
WebWorK is a homework content system built with perl. (Moodle is written in PHP, if you are curious).
Recently, an easy way to interface Moodle with WebWorK has been written. Thus, WebWorK is available inside of mathcourses.
What advantages does WebWorK have over what is available in Moodle?
Moodle is a powerful coursework management system (see the link at left). It uses Latex to write mathematical content. WebWorK also uses LaTeX to provide mathematical typesetting. However, WebWorK has two advantages over the use of moodle alone.
- Webwork has allowed the use of perl functions inside of the questions. This means that you can write one question, and include some randomization so that you have effectively written 5 or 9 or however many questions with one file.
- Webwork is also an open source project, and many people have been working on question sets. These sets are freely available. While instructors can also write their own, the availability of questions gives instructors a more efficient basis with which to set up their course.
How do I get started?
- First, create your course at mathcourses.byu.edu (Follow the link on the left for instructions).
- Next, go to your course and click on the "Turn editing on" button.
- Go to the section in which you wish the homework or quiz to appear. Click on "Add an Activity". Scroll down and select
"WebWorK Problem Set".
- When the page refreshes, you will see a page requesting information about your assignment. There will be either one or two links on this page: "Create WebWorK course" and "Administer the WebWorK portion of this course".
- If you see the first link, feel lucky and click on it to create your course. If you only see the second, you must stop here and ask a course administrator to help you. They will need to set up the webwork course before you can proceed.
- If you are able to create your own course, use the information that is already filled out. Do notadd any instructors. Do use Model_Course for a template. This will set the problem libraries up correctly.
- To be continued ...
What is WebWorK?
WebWorK is a homework content system built with perl. (Moodle is written in PHP, if you are curious). Recently, an easy way to interface Moodle with WebWorK has been written. Thus, WebWorK is available inside of mathcourses.What advantages does WebWorK have over what is available in Moodle?
Moodle is a powerful coursework management system (see the link at left). It uses Latex to write mathematical content. WebWorK also uses LaTeX to provide mathematical typesetting. However, WebWorK has two advantages over the use of moodle alone.- Webwork has allowed the use of perl functions inside of the questions. This means that you can write one question, and include some randomization so that you have effectively written 5 or 9 or however many questions with one file.
- Webwork is also an open source project, and many people have been working on question sets. These sets are freely available. While instructors can also write their own, the availability of questions gives instructors a more efficient basis with which to set up their course.
How do I get started?
- First, create your course at mathcourses.byu.edu (Follow the link on the left for instructions).
- Next, go to your course and click on the "Turn editing on" button.
- Go to the section in which you wish the homework or quiz to appear. Click on "Add an Activity". Scroll down and select "WebWorK Problem Set".
- When the page refreshes, you will see a page requesting information about your assignment. There will be either one or two links on this page: "Create WebWorK course" and "Administer the WebWorK portion of this course".
- If you see the first link, feel lucky and click on it to create your course. If you only see the second, you must stop here and ask a course administrator to help you. They will need to set up the webwork course before you can proceed.
- If you are able to create your own course, use the information that is already filled out. Do notadd any instructors. Do use Model_Course for a template. This will set the problem libraries up correctly.
- To be continued ...