[Aimmath-developers] APPROVED and more

[Ken M. <mo...@pt...>]

I just committed the changes to AIM described in the PROPOSAL below.  In
addition to those listed in the proposal I have also made the following
changes.  If you have any concerns or want a particular change removed, let
me know.

Note: due to the time constraint on releasing the beta, I did not get a
chance to test if these changes work for AIM guests.  That's still on the
Things to Do list.  It should work for registered students though.

COMMITTED CHANGES: Aug 25, 2003
-------------------------------

* committed all of the changes listed in the PROPOSAL below.

* Added Gustav's modifications to the code that produces the quiz selection
page with marks.  I also tweaked this a little from his original version in
order to (a) accommodate multipart questions and (b) improve the formatting
and information of the marks shown.  As a result a student will see their
marks on each quiz they attempted on the quiz selection page when they
select the quiz.

* Added two radio buttons to the bottom of the quiz selection table on the
student quiz selection page.  They say:

 O Show me only one question at a time.
 O Show me the entire quiz.

This allows the student to decide if they want to see the quiz in Focused or
Unfocused mode before they select the quiz.  The default is Focused mode.

The motivation behind this change is mainly to improve efficiency,
especially in a situation where we have many students all trying to access a
quiz at roughly the same time (like in a proctored computer lab setting).
It also seems to be a natural option to have on that page.  If a student
wants to work in Focused mode on the quiz, they simply select the quiz, but
if they intend to just print out the whole quiz and work on it later (like
many of my students do), they can choose to see the quiz in Unfocused mode
immediately.  Whichever radio button they select, they still can switch
between Focused and Unfocused mode while viewing the quiz, of course.

* Made changes throughout the AIM code to implement a new
Config['TimeLimit'] variable. This can now be set in ManualConfig just like
the other global Config values.  The default value is still Neil's value of
2.0 seconds.  I was getting lots of timeout error messages with a 2 second
time limit (perhaps my machine is slow) so I implemented this as a way for
the administrator to change the system default time limit value during
installation.

* Modified the Focus/Unfocus behavior so that when a student selects New
Version or Show Solutions link while viewing a quiz, it retains the current
quiz's focus setting.  Thus, if the quiz is currently focused and the
student asks to see solutions, it will show the solution to the currently
focused question.  If the quiz is focused (showing the solution to one
question) and a student requests a New Version, it returns a new version
focused on question #1. If the current quiz is not focused, the result of
Solutions or New Version will also be unfocused.  This makes sense from the
users' point of view, since their preference of Focusing/Unfocusing is
retained until they decide to change it themselves.

* Fixed minor bugs in aim/Question.mpl and aim/analyze/Question.mpl that
prevented question analysis.

* Added "Sum" to the list of OKNames in SafeParse.mpl.  I use this in
questions about summation notation.

* Made changes so that students are now informed of the number of incorrect
attempts they have made on a question whether or not they got it correct.
In the past it would simply report that their mark was zero.


PREVIOUS PROPOSAL:
-----Original Message-----
From: aim...@li...
[mailto:aim...@li...]On Behalf Of Ken
Monks
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 2:57 PM
To: Aim Developers
Subject: [Aimmath-developers] PROPOSAL: Maple 9 mods;focus/solutions
behavior;bug fixes

Aug 19, 2003
------------
PROPOSAL
  I propose to commit the following changes

* Globally rename Latex to aim/LaTeX as described in previous postings by
Greg Gamble and myself to accomodate Maple 9 (affects 15 files)

* Minor tweak to `Class/Typefunction` to fix a problem that occurs in Maple
9

* Several changes to Aim.mpl, Util.mpl, aim/Question.mpl and aim/Quiz.mpl to
do the following:

  + Fixed the Mark Summary table so it uses the correct links when the quiz
is focused

  + Removed the focus option from the question toolbars when the Trying a
quiz in aim/Question.mpl (since there is already a "Try Separately" link)

  + Fixed a minor formatting bug in aim/Question.mpl

  + Changed the background color for the teacher's answer and solutions to
make it easier to quickly distinguish between viewing solutions and working
on an active quiz while focusing and unfocusing and reloading quizzes (see
below)

  + Added the aim/HTMLColoredPage method to aim/Util.mpl to allow us to set
the background color for the entire html page. Initially I was going to use
this to distinguish solutions pages from active quiz pages, but it was
overkill. :) Thus this function currently is not used for anything, but I
left it in there in case we decide to add such options in the future.

  + Changed the behavior of AIM with regard to showing solutions as follows:

    The only way for a student to get a new version of a quiz is if he (a)
is attempting the quiz for the first time or (b) requests a new version by
clicking on the New Version link.

    In particular, if the student elects to show solutions to a quiz, he
will continue to see the solutions to the quiz he just completed no matter
what he does until he clicks New Version. This allows a student, for
example, to view solutions on one machine, then switch to a different
machine to print them out (or view some of the solutions, then go for lunch,
and then return and read the rest of them).

    When viewing solutions, the focus option now focuses on the given
question and shows its solution instead of generating a new quiz and
focusing on that newly generated question. This allows a student to print
the solution to just one question instead of printing the solutions to the
entire quiz.

-----------------------------------------
Ken Monks - Professor of Mathematics
            University of Scranton
            Scranton, PA 18510
email: mailto:mo...@sc...
web:   http://www.scranton.edu/~monks
-----------------------------------------