WebAssign Fall 2005 Newsletter
November already? How time
flies!
At this rate New Year's will be here in about, oh, three days (it would
seem). We'd better update you on what's cooking here at WebAssign.
In this issue:
New WebAssign Features
Download Manager
Within the Tasks menu you will find a new item: Download Manager.
From this one central location, you can now download all scores,
rosters, or your WebAssign GradeBook and save the result on your
computer as an Excel file.
Multi-section classes can be downloaded in one step, either as multi-sheet Excel
workbook or a zipfile containing individual spreadsheets.
If you have a WebAssign course that is linked to a Blackboard course, the
Scores Download includes an option to retrieve scores in a CSV file
that can be imported into the Blackboard gradebook.
We plan to add more downloadable items to the Download Manager in the future,
including student essays, responses, forum posts, etc. If you have
suggestions to make the download manager better please let us know!
Folders, Question Browser, Enhanced My Files
Released at the end of September, these features are not brand-new, but still
new to many folks. Folders allows you to organize all of your
assignments along with questions, images, pdf and Word documents. The
online HTML manual covers Folders along with other new features; look
for these in the beginning of the table of contents. There is also a PDF
addendum [pdf: 455 kB] to the manual describing the
new features released in September.
GradeBook Sorting
Just released! Now you can sort your GradeBook by any column. Find out who
are your A+ students or which students excel in homework but have
trouble on tests. Send out a "I am concerned ..." message to students
who are falling behind. A class rank ordering is the convenient way to
assess a student's work in your class when they request a letter of
recommendation!
Minor Changes Since the Last Newsletter
 Symbolic images
have been restored to their proper size. You may not have noticed but
they were unintentionally smaller for a while. We also added several
new images -- propto, ell, hbar, cintegral, and perp (or perpendicular)
are displayed as shown at left. You
can find all the tokens you can use with Symbolic::Image here.
A new button was added to the main toolbar -- the How to button. It gives
you quick access to the common tasks from Chapter 2 of the manual.
 Several WebAssign
teachers demonstrated the jmol applet at our annual users
group meeting. The WebAssign programmers made jmol() into a function
right before our very eyes. You can get a spinable 3D molecule in a
WebAssign question just by typing jmol(filename). The file can be in
one of several standard formats, see question ID 458312 or jmol.sourceforge.net for more information.
We have made the text boxes like those in question and assignment
editors keep the characters you type and not change them on saving. In
the past, if you entered ° (the character entity reference for
the degree sign), upon saving, the degree sign would be displayed in
the text box, not the entity reference. We call this WYTIWYG
or What You Type Is What You Get.
We also released a new flag for multiple choice and multiple select questions,
$SET_EACH_POSITION . If this flag is set in the answer field, you
can enter the answer box tag, <_>, for the positions you want the
choices. Most often you will want them in a table. See the template
question named template.set_each_position for an example.
You can now specify where the sigfigs icon is displayed. By default, the
icon appears directly in front of the answer box. If you need to place
it in a different place, just enter the <SIGFIGS> tag where you
want the icon to be displayed.
The online manual for WebAssign is now available in both HTML and pdf
formats. You can always reach the manual page from the Help
link at the top right of all your WebAssign pages.
Coming Soon
Enhanced Rescore
If you have ever had to repair a question on a live assignment, you know that
sometimes a student will have entered a correct response on an earlier
attempt, but not their most recent submission. How nice it would be to
be able to do a rescore which checked all submissions for each student
and counted any correct answer it found… well this is on the way.
The "rescore" link on the scores page of each assignment will soon launch a
small popup window which will give you additional control over the
rescore: which question(s) and students to rescore, and whether to
consider last or best (all) submissions. This new rescore tool will
also solve the issue of browsers "timing-out" when trying to rescore a
very large class/assignment.
Partial Credit for Sig Fig Answers
Students believe they should get partial credit when their numerical answer is
correct, but they entered an incorrect number of significant figures.
When this new feature is released, you will be able to decide how much
partial credit your students will receive. This feature will work with
any question that has been coded to check for significant figures.
New Menus
We will soon be updating the look and feel of the Javascript menus on the
faculty side of WebAssign. The new menus should work reliably in all
recent browsers, and will not display the "sticking" behavior that the
current menus sometimes exhibit.
As part of this upgrade, we will also be changing the functionality of
these menus so that they open when you click instead of when
your mouse passes over them. This change brings our menus more in line
with the way menus function in almost all non-web-based applications.
We realize that this change will take some getting used to, but we are
confident that once accustomed to this new behavior they will feel more
comfortable.
For those who aren't familiar with the Javascript menus, you can enable them now
by going to "My Options", selecting the "Settings" tab, and changing
the first option listed. Previously these menus were off unless
specifically turned on. After this upgrade, they will be turned on by
default.
Consider Our New Unlimited Site
License Solutions...
Ask us about our "unlimited usage licenses" by department or institution, discounted
so that you can budget for your growth over a several year period. With
an unlimited license, all of your instructors can take advantage of
WebAssign -- a bonus that provides unexpected returns in innovative
teaching and learning.
The WebAssign shared database of questions/assignments, homework forums, tutoring and
grade books provides a way to stretch limited funds to cover more of
your instructional needs. If you are interested in learning more,
please email Dan Linville.
Editor's Corner
Hints/Feedback, Other Enhancements.
If you are using the latest edition of a Serway physics textbook, or the
Silberberg or Chang titles in chemistry, you have noticed that we are
working with the publishers to add interactive hints and feedback to
textbook questions.
In addition, these textbooks and others are now offering enhancements like
links to animations, eBook resources, or other online resources within
WebAssign questions. Ask your textbook representative if they plan to
enhance the textbook you are using!
Some of these advanced hint/feedback features will also be a part of the next
version of the WebAssign question editor, so you can easily add them to
your own questions.
Textbook Contributions
We would like to sincerely thank all those who have coded questions and
contributed them to the shared textbook set for a textbook. Your
contributions greatly benefit the whole community of teachers using
WebAssign, and we intend to establish a prominent section of our
upcoming community website to recognize your efforts publicly.
Coding Errors
We are always trying to improve our editorial process, but sometimes errors
still slip through. We will continue to try to fix these as soon as
they are reported, and will be adding a button within WebAssign to make
reporting suspected textbook errors even easier.
For now, the best way is to simply send an email to
support@webassign.net
-- this address puts all emails into a shared "ticketing" system which
makes it easier for us to ensure that no request is missed.
In addition, anyone who is interested in part-time (paid) coding or
testing of textbook questions should feel free to contact us about
current projects.
New Members of the WebAssign Team
WebAssign welcomes several new people to our growing team.
- Dan Linville is our new Senior Account Representative. Dan is the
person to contact about unlimited usage licenses and getting more of
your faculty on board for a budgetable amount.
- Chris
Goulette has joined the editorial team as our Statistics Editor. He
has already overseen the addition of several statistics books to
WebAssign, and we have several more under development. Does your
statistics department know that they can now use WebAssign?
- Vince
Hamner has also joined the editorial staff to expand our on-hand
physics and chemistry expertise. He will also be available to help out
with any textbook coding questions you may have.
- Andy
Coats and John Fowler have come on board in the programming
department. We're excited to have them here improving our ability to
keep making the WebAssign program better and better.
Remember that we're always here if you need assistance.
If you have an idea for improvement, or if you are having problems, just let us know.
We can only help if we are aware of your need.
Until next time, best wishes from all of us.
Sincerely,
The WebAssign Team
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