Guide to WHS: Student Viecarl/communicating_math/Student_Guide.pdf · 2004. 1. 14. · 1 Guide to WHS: Student View In WHS a student is simply one who has a WHS student account. In

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Guide to WHS: Student View In WHS a student is simply one who has a WHS student account. In WHS students add (and drop) classes, submit assignments and communicate with teachers of the classes they have added. Anyone can at no cost become a WHS student and as such can join (at least as an “auditor” or “browser”) any class or course on WHS. At some colleges and schools student accounts are created in advance when students register for a class. In most situations they are created by the individual. At any time an individual needs only one WHS account regardless of the number of classes in which he or she is participating. To get started with WHS connect to www.mathclass.org or www.mathclass.com to reach the mathclass.com main page. The Mathclass portal hosts WHS and other services. To get to WHS select “login” (if you already have an account) or “Web Homework” (if you need to create an account for yourself). The result will be, respectively, one of the two screens below. At this point you can log in or create your account.

Logging In or Creating an Account

If You Have an Account If you already have an account then enter your login and password.

If You Don’t Already Have an Account Pass the mouse over the “Web Homework” bar on the mathclass main page and press the “Register” (as a New User) bar which will appear near the center of the screen. This will place you in the Registration Screen. If you have an account which you did not create as a new user then you will also land in the Registration Screen when you login. The difference in the two cases is that in the latter case most of the screen will be filled in. Now simply fill in the information that is not there. At this time we suggest that you enter your student number or social security number as your password. You will be able

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change it later. For now its convenient, easy to remember, and you have it written down in several places. Once you are registered for a class the teacher of that class can create a new password for you if you lose the old one. The requested social security number is used only within the system to uniquely identify your account. If you object to providing your social security number you can enter 9-digit number of your choice. However, be careful to make a note of the number you provide since it will become your initial password and the definitive identifier of your work on the system. You should find your school in the “School” menu. If you do not find your school in this menu select any school (e.g. “University of Kentucky” ) temporarily and go ahead and create your account. Then use the Help (see sec 1.1.6) button to email a request for assistance in getting your school listed. Once it is listed you can use the “Modify Account” menu on the main page to change to your own school. Importance of the Email Address The email address is required for two reasons: 1. With it the email address the system can provide communication among the teacher, student, and the system itself. Any type of email account (e.g. AOL, hotmail, school system account, etc.) is fine. 2. The email address becomes the student’s login id.

If You Don’t Have An Email Address You can, and a short-term measure use a fake email address. For instance if Mary M. Mullins is a student at Wolfgang Beethoven High School she might use [email protected] The idea is that the full name should keep the address unique amongst the school and the rest of the address will keep it unique in the world. If you use a fake email be sure to use one you can remember. Do not use someone else’s email address!! Students should get and use an e-mail address. If the school is not providing this service, there are a number of free internet mail services, e.g. many students at the University of Kentucky prefer to use hotmail.com because it is browser based . Remember that the email address becomes the user’s login id. If the user’s email address is subsequently changed (this can be done at “Account Modification” on the main WHS screen as we will see momentarily) then the login is automatically changed to the new email address. This completes registration. To activate your new account press the “Submit Information” bar Things that Might Go Wrong

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If there is a problem your registration screen will probably be returned with the following message:

Your E-mail address or social security number has already been registered with another account. If you have already registered, then please login with your already registered account and password. Otherwise, it is likely that there is a typo in the submitted e-mail address or social security number.

Barring a spelling error the most likely thing to have happened is that you already have an account either because it was created for you automatically or because you created it earlier and have forgotten. Because people can use either a student number or a social security number it can happen (through very rarely) that an account has already been created with your social security number (which, perhaps, happened to be someone else’s student number). If this has happened then choose a random number and see if you can create you account. If this was the problem you can then use the Help (see sec 1.1.6) button to send email to the system people asking them to change the id number of your account to the correct one. Persistence of Student Accounts Student accounts generally vanish when all of the courses in which they are registered are complete. Students are notified by email that accounts are about to expire. Students whose accounts expire can subsequently create new accounts for participation in future courses. Once you have an account and successfully log into WHS you will be at the WHS main screen. The left side of the screen has a column of eight “rollover bars”. Touching one of them with the mouse, each corresponding to a different page in the display to the right.Selecting the Announcements bar produces a screen with a pull-down menu at which we can select from among the classes in which we are registered (with WHS). If yours is a new account not automatically created by your school’s registration system then you menu is probably empty. You need to add at least one class.

Adding or Dropping a Class If you are registered (in the WHS system) for a class then it will appear as an option in your “Assignment Selection” screen. At the University of Kentucky most students who pre-register for mathematics classes (which use WHS) will already have WHS accounts and be registered for their classes. If you have not pre-registered for a class or for some reason you are not registered in the class you expect then it is a simple matter for you to register yourself.

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Select the “Add/Drop Classes” link on the WHS main page. Since we are using an account which lists “University of Kentucky” as the school, UK courses are listed in the pull-down menu . To access classes at other schools select the “Other Schools” bar at the bottom of the page. Use the resulting screen to change the school. For instance if we wanted to add Dr. Kuhn’s Calculus I course at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga we would press the “Other Schools” bar, select University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and press the “Submit” bar. Then when we return to the Drop/Add screen the classes listed will be those at UTC. Note: If you change the school from UK and subsequently want to select another UK class in the same session you will need to use the same page to change the school back to UK. Note: There is a small checkbox labeled “Include Course List Names” which can be selected on the “Other Schools” screen. This results in a more detailed display of course information. This is primarily for use by teachers who wish to offer the same course material. The additional information tells them how to set up a class offering the same assignments This is covered in more detail in the next chapter. To drop a class simply select it in the “Drop Class” menu on the “Drop/Add” screen and press the “Drop Class” bar. Remember that you cannot drop a class in which you are registered until the teacher changes your status from “registered” back to “registration pending”.

The Differences between Browsing and Registration In the example we are Requesting Registration in the course Ma123-000 by pressing the “Request Registration” bar. Selection for browsing does not provide for course participation, communication with the instructor, etc. However it does provide full access to the course materials. Having requested registration we have registration pending for the Ma123-000 class at the University of Kentucky. This means that we have the same status as a “browser” until the teacher actually admits us to registration in the class. At this point we can access, work, and submit any of the course homework sets – and receive results and feedback from the system. None of the work will, however, appear on the instructor’s student screens and the course communication links between us and the

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instructor will not have been created. The course teacher (in this case Dr. Eakin) will receive notice on his class management screen that we have requested registration in the course. He must approve (at his class management screen) our actual registration. Once we are registered for the Ma123-000 course the teacher will have access to our results on all course assignments. In addition the system will create convenient email-based lines of communication between Jean and the teacher. However it is important to realize that we can go immediately to work without waiting for registration approval. Once our registration is approved all work done while in browsing status will be available to the teacher exactly as if we had been registered from the beginning. One final remark on browsing and registration is in order. If we are registered in a class the teacher can change our password. That is, any teacher in a class in which we are registered can change our password. This is advantageous since it means that if we forget our password we need only ask the teacher to reset the password for us. It can be disadvantageous if we irritate the teacher since he or she need not tell us the new password. Moreover, once we are enrolled in a class we cannot drop the class unless the teacher changes our status from “registered” to “pending”. Problems with frozen accounts resulting from a misunderstanding with a teacher must be resolved through ordinary academic procedures. The first of these is to talk to the teacher about it. WHS Registration is NOT Academic Registration! It is very important to understand that the terminology notwithstanding WHS registration is completely independent of academic registration (i.e. registration “for credit”) and WHS “Drop/Add” is not the same as a college or school’s Drop/Add. WHS registration constitutes an agreement by the teacher for the student to “sit in” on the WHS class component of a course. There are no fees paid, transcripts created, or other commitments involved and absent other considerations the agreement can be terminated by either party at any time. Now that we are in a course we can get to work. The first thing to do is check the announcements

Checking the Class Announcements and Home Pages WHS provides teachers with multiple means for communicating with their students. Ultimately each is an electronic metaphor for a more traditional mechanism. Generations of teachers have used the class chalkboard to write daily announcements and to attend to minor administrative details. The Announcements are intended to serve this purpose. The teacher of a class can quickly write to the announcements pad for the class from any computer connected to the internet. To view the class announcements highlight the “Announcements” link on the WHS main page. This causes the announcement menu and screen to appear The menu contains all

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courses we have added whether we have registration or browser status. Selection of a class causes the announcements for that to be displayed. The Announcement screen for class contains links to the class homepage and course homepage. The class homepage is simply a web page which is analogous to the traditional class bulletin board. It is maintained by the teacher and can contain any information he or she wishes. In some situation, particularly in colleges, there may be many teachers offering different classes, or sections, of the same course. For instance at the University of Kentucky there are typically 1000 students taking the same basic calculus course in 40 different sections, each with its own instructor. In these courses all of the students have the same web-based homework assignments and often they all take the same examinations. The course homepage is maintained by the course coordinator who compiles the list of homework problems. It contains more general information of interest to all students taking the course. In the special case in which there is a single teacher of one class the course homepage and class homepage are often the same or one of them is left blank.

Doing an Assignment Now it’s time to get to work which means doing an assignment. When we select the “Assignment” link on the WHS main screen we get the assignment screen which contains two menus. The upper menu allows us to select a course in which we are registered at which time a menu gives us a choice of all assignments on the current list for the class. Our Ma123-000 assignments have expiration date included. These are the dates by which the assignment must be completed. We choose the first which is an Algebra Review. There remain three buttons in the table: Common Version, Personal Version, and Specific Version. The common version returns the same version of the homework each time it is pressed, regardless of who presses it. If a number is entered in the box above “specific version” and that button is pressed, a version of the assignment corresponding to that number is returned (if no number is entered and the button is pressed a random version of the assignment is returned). Finally, if the “personal version” bar is pressed the assignment corresponding to the user’s account number is returned. It is therefore specific to the user. The system records only the results of attempts at personal versions. This particular assignment is a preliminary version of the Kentucky Early Mathematics Testing Program (KEMPT) diagnostic exam for sophomore and junior

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high school students. The KEMTP is an excellent indicator of whether a student’s basic algebra skills are adequate for college-level mathematics.

Version Numbers Note the version number 0.3595087, in the upper left corner. If we enter this number on the “specific version” line before pressing “Specific Version” then this test will be repeated. This is important since we may want to do is print the assignment out, work it out on paper, and then re-select the assignment at a later time and enter the answers. Obviously this is possible only if there is a way to relate the answers to that particular exam. The version number may be in scientific notation (e.g. .0900120 E 1). In this case just enter it as presented. Although WHS supports numerous answer formats this particular assignment is all multiple choice. Five alternatives are presented as possible answers to each question. The student solves the problem and selects the correct answer from among them. When the answers are entered the “Submit and Record Results” bar at the bottom of the assignment is pressed and the system promptly returns web page which contains the complete statement of each problem attempted and whether the response was correct or incorrect.. Depending on how the teacher has the homework set up it may or may not return the “correct” answer.

Individual Homework, Version Number, and Expiration Dates As noted above the “Personal Version” of an assignment uses the student’s WHS account number as the version number. The WHS system expects the teacher (actually the list coordinator) to specify expiration dates for homework. If no date is specified the system assumes a date several thousand years hence which for practical purposes says such homeworks never expire. The system keeps track of all problems in his/her personal set for which the student submits a correct answer before the expiration data. There is no limit on the number of attempts permitted. At any time the student and the teacher can quickly check the student’s status relative to an assignment. (See “Checking Results”, below)

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Printing Out WHS Assignments vs Working at the Computer WHS homework sets generally take an hour or more for a prepared student or even a group of students to do completely. While it is possible to bring a set up on the computer screen and work the problems one at a time the expectation is that students will print the assignments out, work them, and check the answers later. Problem sets are usually developed with generous amounts of white space. This, together with the space on the backs of the pages is almost always sufficient to record student solutions. If when checking with the machine we subsequently find that our answer is inconsistent with the “official” one we can check the work for obvious errors and then if necessary consult with the instructor or a tutor. Experience has shown that such consultations are much, much more efficient and productive when the student and instructor or tutor work directly with the printed problems and student solutions. Fully half of student difficulties with homework involve understanding of exactly what is being asked. When this is the heart of the difficulty , having the printed problem with the diagram in a form on which notes can be made has proven very useful.

Video/Audio Hints From Server and Local Machine Some WHS homework contain links to brief (up to three minutes) audio or video clips which are intended to help the student better understand the material. Selection of one of these links might, for instance, bring up a video of someone explaining the solution to a related problem.

The links are of two types. The first is a familiar html link which when selected will cause the WHS server to send the requested file to the local machine

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The second is displayed as a bar with a listbox (or “pulldown menu”) of letters A-Z to its left. If the bar is selected when there is nothing selected in the listbox then the result is exactly the same as in the first case. That is a file is sent from the WHS server and displayed on the local machine. On the other hand if a letter is selected on the listbox and the browser is a recent version of Internet Explorer then WHS instructs the local machine to go to that drive on the local machine and look for the file to be displayed there. The drive is typically a CD. Since the video files are quite large (up to 5 Mb each) they are not practical for dialup connections or even for relatively fast connections when a significant number of people want to use them at the same time. The second type of “video link” addresses both of these.

Importance of Properly Logging Out and Timeouts Students (and teachers) are busy people who frequently walk away from WHS sessions without properly logging out. In the current system this is done by terminating the browser session. This can be done by closing down the browser or directing it to another URL (e.g by clicking on “Home” on the browser toolbar). The problem with not logging out is that someone else might sit down and start to work in that session either naively or maliciously. In the first case the second person might enter homework answers, thinking he or she was “crediting” the work to his/her own account. There are safeguards/reminders to guard against this but students have been known to miss them. The second, more dangerous case, is when the second individual impersonates the owner of the account. He/she might, for instance, submit bogus responses to an assignment or use the system to send offensive queries or comments back to the instructor. Most institutions have rules against such behavior but in such circumstances they are difficult to enforce and the best. Timeouts are a safety mechanism to protect users who forget to properly log out of a session. In a WHS session if the user interacts with the server frequently then the server assumes that the person pressing the keys is the proper owner of the account. If there is a long period of inactivity the server assumes that the owner left the session and “the bad guy” has taken over. It then asks the user to prove he/she is the owner by asking for his/her identity and password. This is called a “timeout”; they occur after ten minutes of inactivity if a person is doing anything but an assignment and after an hour when

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working on an assignment. They are particularly likely to occur when one is working on an assignment a problem at a time, entering the answers as he/she goes. In this situation the browser is collecting all of the information locally and goes to the server only when the “Submit and Record..” bar is pressed. Since under this scenario it might have been some time since the last trip to the server a timeout is likely to occur before the student’s answers have actually been submitted and the result upon pressing the “Submit and Record..” bar will be the following “Authentication Screen” If timeout occurs nothing is lost!! The server would simply be saying that it has been sufficiently long since we contacted it directly that it wants to be sure who is at the keyboard. The steps to be taken are: 1. Enter login and password in the

Authentication screen.

2. Press the BACK button on the Authentication screen. Pressing the BACK button on the browser toolbar will not produce the same result. If you do press that button, press the “Forward” button on the toolbar and then press the BACK button on the screen.

This takes one back precisely to the point at which the action (e.g. pressing “Submit and Record” ) was taken which caused the Authentication screen to appear. Remember that in this case we must press the “Submit and Record Results” bar again. This is because in case of a timeout the original “Submit” will not have been recorded since the system was unsure who actually pressed the bar.

Upload Submissions The simplest, most straightforward, and most common WHS homework format is the interactive problem set. However WHS provides for larger assignments such as term projects, computer programs, etc. through the “Upload File” submission form on the Assignments main page. With this format the student submits a file for a particular course by uploading it from his/her local machine. The WHS system

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knows who the student and who the instructor. It places a time stamp on the submission, checks it for known viruses, and a makes it available to the teacher through his/her course management screen.

Feedback following Assignment Submissions. When the student presses the “Submit and Record Results” bar after entering his/her answers to an assignment the system can respond in various ways, depending on how the teacher has set up the assignment. The “default” is to return to the student a web page which contains for each question answered:

a. The full statement of the problem b. The answer the student submitted c. A comment on whether the answer was deemed correct by the

computer. [Note: A problem with multiple answers is answered correctly only if every component answer is correct.]

d. The answer(s) the computer expected e. An open text box into which the student can immediately record a

response. These responses are both emailed to the teacher and organized chronologically in an “on the fly” web page where the teacher can read them and respond by email

An example is shown in the picture below. In addition the system emails back to the student a record of which problems he/she has attempted in the submission and which were correct/incorrect, and any comments he/she submitted regarding the problem.

Checking Homework Results Later We (and only we and the teacher) can check our results for all problems on all assignments at the “Homework Scores” screen on the WHS main page. The system presents a table for each homework in which problems are columns and there are two rows labeled “Right” and “Missed”. For each problem answered, in either the “Right” or

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“Missed” row there is a link with the date on which an answer was last submitted. Selection of this link opens a frame which displays the problem. This permits us to rapidly scan our homework results and identify the problems with which we have had trouble.

The results screen is organized for ease of viewing hence all of the results are not displayed at once. There is a “Printable Version” button at which we can access a page with all of the results on one page. The instructor can review upload submissions, place a grade on the assignment which is recorded by the WHS system, and can return annotated copies of the document to the student by email. The instructor grades for uploaded files are available from the Homework Scores menu. The “Homework Summary” table records for each assignment the date on which a problem in that assignment was first answered (correctly or incorrectly), the date on which a problem in that assignment was last answered (correctly or incorrectly), and the percentage of the problems the student had gotten correct prior to the problem set’s expiration. Above each assignment there is a check box. If a subset of these is selected then the average of the correct percentages for those assignments is displayed at the bottom of the table. Since many instructors count homework done in time as part in grades this gives the student and the instructor a very quick snapshot of how many correct solutions have been submitted (before expiration) for the selected homework sets. Class Downloads Previously, we saw that students in a WHS class can submit material to the teacher by uploading files. There is also a download capability through which the teacher can distribute materials to the entire. While any student (registered or browser) can upload files only registered students can download class materials. Since the teacher can receive uploads from any class member and in turn download them to all registered members this provides an efficient, simple, and secure mechanism for the private distribution of materials among the members of a class.

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Downloads are retrieved using the Class Downloads button on the Announcements page for the class is the gateway to the downloads. The announcements screen on the same page is often used to inform class members of the availability of new downloads or the last date that old ones will be posted. Browsers or anyone who has requested but not received registration cannot access the downloads menu. If they press the Class Downloads bar they get a message saying they do not have permission.

However registered students will see a menu of available downloads

Each row corresponds to a file available for downloading. The rows are arranged in chronological order with the most recently installed at the top. To download a file one presses the link in the leftmost column which also displays the name of the file. The other columns display the size, installation date, and a brief description of the file.

The WHS Help System Each WHS screen has a “Help” button on tool bar at the upper right. Clicking on “Help” opens a help screen as in the graphic below.

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Use the Help screen to report any technical problems with WHS, for requests concerning account upgrades, or for information on WHS workshops or courses. The help screen changes and at any time it may or may not have a form that applies directly to a particular question or problem. If this is the case use the “Technical Report Request” form and detail the problem or question in the “Problem Description” text box. Note that responses will be directed to the email address provided in the form so this must be a valid address for the person making the request.