The WeBWorK::Rochester code camp, focused on user interface improvements, was held at Rochester from June 6th through June 9th, 2012. It was a great success. This was the first working gathering of WeBWorK developers since our summer 2007 meeting at AIM (American Institute of Mathematics); we hope it will kick start a spate of development over the summer on the look and feel of WeBWorK. In conjunction with PREP courses last summer and two additional code camps this summer, we hope to flatten the learning curve significantly for new users of WeBWorK and to improve the overall usability of the system.
We have a lot to report, including significant progress in WeBWorK interface design, new and developing infrastructure procedures for supporting WeBWorK users and developers, discussion about the social structure of the openWeBWorK development community, and a report on our collaboration with the Teaching Open Source organization through their POSSE workshop at RIT.
Oh yes -- and since WeBWorK now has contributions in more than one language and from several countries -- we changed the name of the National Problem Library to the WeBWorK Open Problem Library (WOPL) or Open Problem Library for short. More on that later -- it was quite a discussion!
If you are really impatient, you can stop reading and go explore the new stuff, bugs and all, at https://hosted2.webwork.rochester.edu/webwork2/maa101 (or maa102, etc). Sign in as profa and use profa as the password. Use your iPad!!!! -- it’s not pretty yet but it works!!!
Below we’ll first describe the daily progression of the code camp for those who weren’t there, and especially for those who haven’t participated in previous code camps. They are intense experiences. A lot can get done; it’s hard work, but it’s also fun and satisfying.
We’d like to encourage others to plan and hold local code camps to work on aspects of WeBWorK that they would like to develop. No permission is needed from any central WeBWorK authorities, but those of us who have been doing this for a while will be glad to help out in any way we can. Let us know.
At the end of this note we’ll list specific accomplishments (deliverables :-) ) for the week.
As a last item before describing our meeting, here is the list of WeBWorK events scheduled to take place this summer and fall. We hope to see you at one or more of them. Keep track of the events section in the wiki (http://webwork.maa.org/wiki) for new additions.
- WeBWorK::Clinton - June 20-22, 2012 (John Travis)
- WeBWorK Consultants Workshop - August 1, 2012 (Arnie Pizer)
- Mathfest Exhibit Presentations - August 2-4, 2012 (John Travis and Jason Aubrey)
- WeBWorK::Winona - August 5-8, 2012 (Jason Aubrey and John Travis)
- MAA JMM Mini Course - January 8-10, 2013 (Joint Math Meeting in San Diego ) (Jason Aubrey and John Travis)
