logging in to a book

[David Farmer]

It is now possible to 'log in' to the HTML version of a PreTeXt
textbook. The publisher can choose to enable logging in, and
if it is enabled, logging in can be required, or not. And whether
or not it is required, a 'guest' login can be allowed, or not.

Other options will be available in the future.

The current default is that logging in is enabled but not
required, and it is possible to log in as a guest.

The point of logging in is to activate additional features. At the
moment, the only such feature is allowing 'reading questions' to be
answered in the text.

Suggestions for other use cases are welcome.

To try out the current setup, go to the sample article:

http://mathbook.pugetsound.edu/examples/sample-article/html/interesting-corollary.html

and scroll down to Section 4.2.5 .

You won't see anything special, because you are not logged in.

To log in, scroll up to the top and hover your mouse near the
top-right of the page, maybe a quarter-inch down and a half-inch
from the right. The word "login" will appear. Click it,
and then log in as 'guest' with password 'guest'. (Note: the
login link may be outside the banner at the top.)

Now if you scroll down to the reading questions, you will see
a little "Answer -->" link after each question. Click it and
you will be able to enter your answer.

What is supposed to happen is that, when you are logged in,
your computer will remember your answer(s). Eventually you
will be able to share data across multiple devices, but for now
it only uses local storage.

Currently there are accessibility issues, and it may not work
well on mobile devices.

You can enter inline math LaTeX using $...$ or \(...\) delimiters,
and inline AsciiMath using backticks `...` as delimiters. Except
for math, the answer has to be plain text.

I would appreciate hearing of reasonable answer markup that is
not handled properly. In particular, if you have bought into
the myth that dollar sign math delimiters are a bad idea because
of possible confusion with other uses of dollar signs, note that
the following nonsensical answer behaves as expected:

The optimal price of apples is $2 if $3<n<10$ & $4\le m$, and
$4 otherwise, except when `z<=e^0.7`. The first option is
better for consumers because $2 < $4.

Note also that white space is preserved, so a copy-paste
of the above answer does not look good because the lines are
wider than the answer box.

Suggestions are welcomed for other features to enable when
logged in. If there were an 'instructor mode', what would be
different?

Regards,

David

ps. There was a report of this feature not working properly in an
older browser.

[Rob Beezer]

Dear David,

A great start to making PreTeXt books much more capable. Thanks for your work
on this.

I hope the ability to log in, and for a reader and instructor to have persistent
storage associated with their copy of a book, prompts lots of creative
suggestions from publishers, authors, and instructors (even if they all might be
the same person!).

Rob

[Rob Beezer]

On 11/27/18 4:18 AM, David Farmer wrote:
> Suggestions are welcomed for other features to enable when
> logged in.  If there were an 'instructor mode', what would be
> different?

OK, I'll go first. I use reading questions a lot. Usually, they are emailed to
me by 6 AM of the day the material is covered, and I try to read and respond
before class. Obviously, I don't have huge classes.

The purpose is to

A. Have students read the text before the lecture.

B. Have them improve their skills in reading technical material, since it seems
we rarely expect this. (They do get much, much better in just one semester.)

C. As you say, I learn before class what they might know (like how to compute a
3 x 3 determinant) and what they do not know (like how to paraphrase the
definition of the null space of a matrix).

D. I respond with comments as necessary, as a way to help correct how they
write/express technical topics.

To be able to use these in a class, my instructor version would need

1. A way to enter comments that would appear in the student's version. So a
math-enabled textbox, like there is now, would be perfect. (Recycle some code?)

2. A way to quickly give a student full credit or no credit (checkboxes?) and
something for partial credit. This score would be made available to the student
with any comments. Without scores, students are unlikely to do this.

I'd make an instructor button for each question, which would bring up a single
page with every student's name and their answer, with a comment box for each.
Maybe a discrete slider (0 to 10) with a checkbox at each end for 0 and 10?

I've kept scores manually in a spreadsheet, so managing those would not need to
be part of a first iteration.

This presumes students are associated with my course via their login, and I
guess you would want some way to freeze or lock-out answers after some specific
time/deadline specified previously by the instructor.

I use a clipboard manager to keep frequent comments, so I don't have to retype
them. Integrating this process would be a nice enhancement, especially if they
persisted from term to term.

Thanks,
Rob

[Alex Jordan]

+1 to all Rob says.

2.  A way to quickly give a student full credit or no credit (checkboxes?) and
something for partial credit.  This score would be made available to the student
with any comments.  Without scores, students are unlikely to do this.

And with this, some easy way to put the scores into a spreadsheet.

(Now I see comment on this below.)

Perhaps a table where you could copy-paste two columns (names, scores).

Some browsers are not good with copy-pasting table columns, so maybe

export a csv.

 

I'd make an instructor button for each question, which would bring up a single
page with every student's name and their answer, with a comment box for each.
Maybe a discrete slider (0 to 10) with a checkbox at each end for 0 and 10?

And also this page should repeat the question.

Should this really be a separate page? Or an expandable thing in the instructor version?

 

I've kept scores manually in a spreadsheet, so managing those would not need to
be part of a first iteration.

This presumes students are associated with my course via their login, and I
guess you would want some way to freeze or lock-out answers after some specific
time/deadline specified previously by the instructor.

You may also want some indicator if the student changes their answer after the

instructor has marked a score. Some way to alert the instructor that maybe it is a

good time to revisit the student answer.

Or maybe you enable no more than one submission from your student readers.

Related, if a student changes their answer, should they still see "old" comments

from the instructor?

 

I use a clipboard manager to keep frequent comments, so I don't have to retype
them.  Integrating this process would be a nice enhancement, especially if they
persisted from term to term.

Thanks,
Rob

David said:

Suggestions are welcomed for other features to enable when
logged in.  If there were an 'instructor mode', what would be
different?

Is this the right place to collect general use cases for being logged in?

I'm assuming this thread is only about reading questions, extending to how

the instructor edition might deal with reading questions.

 

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[Thomas Judson]

Hi David,

This looks very promising. One thing that I noticed is that you use “answer” to reply to a reading question and also “answer” as a link to the answer for an exercise. I am not sure if this will be confusing to users, but we should think about it.

Cheers,
Tom

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[David Farmer]

Good point.

I will change it to "My answer -->". I may be a while before
I update the live version.

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[Matt Boelkins]

I agree with what Rob, Alex, and Tom write.  "Response" would be an alternative to "My answer".

For my use of reading questions, I use Google forms.  This allows me to see all of my students responses on a single page in a spreadsheet, which I can both easily scan for students' conceptions but also easily mark for completion for their reading grades.  I think it's important that this be a feature that's available since not everyone who uses reading questions will want to make individualized comments on student responses.

Often I will also compile a list of model student responses to reading questions and post them on our CMS site, doing so on a daily basis so that students have "answers".  If there was a way to do this after the fact -- have the instructor post exemplary responses that would appear in the text following the students' own responses, after the fact -- that would be a nice feature as well.

David, thanks for all your work on this.  It looks exciting and promising.

Matt

[Oscar Levin]

Hi David,

This is awesome progress!  How did you get the smart dollar sign behavior???  I'll add to what has been said above, which I mostly agree with.

For reading questions:

1. Definitely some way as an instructor to see all responses by my students, grouped by question, and respond to students.  Perhaps inside the source, some standard canned responses can be included that the instructor can click on and send, in addition to the option to enter custom replies.  Or, as Rob seems to suggest, a history of the most often typed replies in the instructor edition.  Eventually, someone will figure out a machine learning solution for this.
2. I agree that we need some way to giving students credit for this, and certainly downloading a csv file would be a reasonable approach.  I think we need to be careful though to not try to reinvent the LMS gradebook.  Much better would be a general LTI that allows tracking of grades in the instructor's course shell.
3. I would like to see the option of other answer types (multiple choice, true/false, multiple select, etc.).  These might be less reading question and more concept exercise, but they would still serve the purpose of checking whether students have read the section.
4. A small issue on Chrome (Windows): as I type the answer, the textbox grows vertically (each character increases the length of the box).

Other uses for logging in, most of which I'm sure you have thought of anyway:

1. Full solutions to exercises for instructors.
2. Teaching suggestions, objectives, other content just for instructors.
3. Annotations, both for students/instructors themselves and for communication between instructors and students.
4. Persistent view options (eventually, let users select a font, background color/theme, size, language, etc).  
5. Track progress through a book (so they can jump to last page read).  This could also be communicated to the instructor to give students credit for time spent reading.
6. Set the difficulty level of the text (more or fewer solutions provided in more or less detail; obviously this is a long way off).
7. Instructor can cross out material inappropriate for their course, or perhaps even rearrange material in a custom edition.
8. Timed release of solutions.  Instructor can show answers to students after a particular date, if they are logged in.  Or release answers after the 3rd attempt, for example.

I'll add more as I think of it.

Oscar.

[Rob Beezer]

On 12/3/18 11:32 AM, Oscar Levin wrote:
> Or, as Rob seems to suggest, a history of the most often typed replies in the instructor edition.
> Eventually, someone will figure out a machine learning solution for this.

<audible-smirk/>

> 2. I agree that we need some way to giving students credit for this, and

> certainly downloading a csv file would be a reasonable approach.  I think we
> need to be careful though to not try to reinvent the LMS gradebook.  Much
> better would be a general LTI that allows tracking of grades in the
> instructor's course shell.

The current UTMOST grant has some of this integration as an explicit goal.

> 3. I would like to see the option of other answer types (multiple choice,

> true/false, multiple select, etc.).  These might be less reading question
> and more concept exercise, but they would still serve the purpose of
> checking whether students have read the section.

I converted about on-third of my linear algebra reading questions to WW, and of
course, auto-grading is deluxe. And likely compulsory if you have 250 students.

> Other uses for logging in, most of which I'm sure you have thought of anyway:

David's done a lot of thinking. ;-)

> 1. Full solutions to exercises for instructors.

This would be easy to "turn-on" for the instructor's edition. Though
personally, I'd think twice about making them available this way if I wanted to
never, ever, let students see them.

> 2. Teaching suggestions, objectives, other content just for instructors.

We have the "commentary" element for exactly this purpose, so authors can start
using it now, so their book is ready once it becomes a feature.

> I'll add more as I think of it.

Yes, please do.

Rob

[Oscar Levin]

> I'll add more as I think of it.

Yes, please do.

Here's an idea based on a new feature kindle has available: flash cards.  On kindle, they have already identified words as part of their x-ray feature.  You can look at those that you have already read to (I assume) and study them as a flashcard.  Perhaps terms and notation could allow a user to click and select "make flashcard" to add the term to their stack.  The backside of the flash card could be automatically filled in with the definition or paragraph containing the term, or could allow the reader to customize the text.

Of course we could also allow instructors to select which flash cards, from those made available by the author, they would like students to have.  

Oscar.

[Rob Beezer]

On 1/5/19 7:31 AM, Oscar Levin wrote:
> Here's an idea based on a new feature kindle has available: flash cards.

I think this was my first "aah-ha" moment illustrating the possibilities of
structured source. From January 2005:

http://linear.pugetsound.edu/download/fcla-flash-0.30.pdf

A student came in to linear algebra class, just prior to an exam, with a stack
of handwritten flash cards. And I thought, "I can rip out all the important
bits of FCLA and re-format them." So I did. Basically, I used "sed" to get all
the definitions and theorems out of their LaTeX environments, and used
new/different LaTeX macros to format them two-to-a-page.

The Kindle version sounds a little more modern.

See this thread, where there is now evidence that I am telling the same stories
all over again. In particular, Alex Best has built an application (slightly
different to what you propose).

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mathbook-xml-support/f9f4_U6CxlU/discussion

Rob

[Rob Beezer]

If you were interested in the "flash card" sub-thread here, some very
interesting discussion has continued over on a related GitHub issue:

https://github.com/rbeezer/mathbook/issues/208

[Alex Jordan]

I have a page here:

http://spot.pcc.edu/math/clm-draft/section-velocity.html

which is a little bit customized. I am putting recent and
experimental features in place somewhere to show to
local colleagues.

At this page, what calls itself an "Exercises" is actually
a relabeled "Reading Questions". Within, there is an
exercisegroup (which may not be allowed, but it looks like
reading-questions is not in the schema yet). I believe that
the spacing for the answer entry field is not calibrated for
when there is an exercisegroup. I mean that when you
are logged in, and click to record an answer, the buttons
for "delete", "save", and "how to write math" overlap with
content beneath them.

Is it possible to adjust the CSS for this situation? Of course,

maybe I should just not expect exercisegroup to behave well

here.

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[David Farmer]

Two things about that use case for Reading Questions:

1) The anticipated use case for reading questions is:
There is one (sub)section on that page, it has class
"reading-questions", and that (sub)section pretty much
contains only a few exercises.

So, your use case is different. I can imagine other use cases
where you want students to answer questions in the book
(for example, the regular exercises at the end of the section),
but those would not be reading questions.

2) I am planning to change the interface to answering
reading questions. Briefly: eliminate the "edit" and
"save" buttons, along the lines of a suggestion Oscar made
when reading questions were introduced.

That may make things work properly in your use case.

Let's not wait too long to discuss other ways in which a user
would answer questions in the HTML version. The fill-in-the-blanks
are already on my radar.

David

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[Alex Jordan]

For background, I'm not invested in bringing saveable
answers to questions in CLM. I wanted to use CLM as
a vehicle to get some features on the radar of local
faculty. Partly for the sake of getting more volunteers
to work on ORCCA, and partly to remind some
colleagues why they shouldn't invest in starting brand

new OER projects in Word, which is happening. The

point being that with PTX, new exciting features just

pop into existence (from their perspective).

But let's talk about the CLM use case. This is not a

textbook. So maybe it isn't the kind of project PTX is

designed for. Differential calculus students spend

3 hours a week in a lecture-like environment, and

3 more hours each week in a "lab". During lab, they

work through CLM with the instructor and a student

lab assistant helping groups of 2 or 3 as needed.

(The regular textbook is either Stewart or APEX.)

In that scenario, it would be handy to have a place

for students to record their answers, while in lab.

Currently that is mostly done on separate paper,

submitted one per student or one per group. Some

instructors may require the students to complete

any uncompleted exercises as homework.

So that is what happens here with CLM. How common

is this scenario? I have no idea. Yet another PCC PTX

project is this one, which is for self-study in the library.

It's another usage deviating from a "text book".

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[Alex Jordan]

Maybe the CLM exercises are more like worksheets.

And worksheet//exercise~s could be a candidate for

recorded answers.

[Rob Beezer]

On 2/16/19 6:27 PM, Alex Jordan wrote:
> Maybe the CLM exercises are more like worksheets.

That's where I was going as I got caught up with this thread late last night.

David's comments about the nature/structure of reading questions are accurate,
so I don't expect to support an "exercisegroup" there.

[Oscar Levin]

Another use for logging in to a book: put a permlink on everything for the instructor version!  I just wanted to point an instructor to a specific exercise in a section.  What I did was copy the permlink from the exercises division containing the exercise, paste it into my email, then go back to the book to "inspect" the exercise, grab the permid and replace the permid from the exercises division in my copied link.  Then I needed to cut the new link from my email and repast it (as text) so that the hyperlink would point to the right spot.  

[Rob Beezer]

Good idea. Permlinks need work, especially in light of the availability of the
new "permid".

Would you mind making an issue? That will remind me to attack permlinks,
generally, for an upgrade.

Do we need a publisher switch that implies "instructor edition"? Turn on
"commentary", excessive permlinks, etc.?

Rob

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[David Farmer]

I think the publisher enables an instructor edition.

When an instructor logs in, then all those distracting extra
permalinks can appear. There are at least two ways to do this:

1) The HTML source has all the permalinks, marked up in a way that
by default they are invisible.

2) Javascript adds those permalinks all over the place, and makes
them visible.

My initial reaction is that the 2nd option is better, having not
thought about the implications.

This is pretty easy to do and may be a reasonable first feature
to implement for the instructor edition.

Maybe you have to hover near the item to see the permalink.
That would be less distracting. Maybe I'll play with fading the
existing permalinks (even more) and darkening them when you hover.

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[Rob Beezer]

On 2/28/19 8:28 AM, David Farmer wrote:
> 1) The HTML source has all the permalinks, marked up in a way that
> by default they are invisible.

But still annoys those using a screen-reader?

> My initial reaction is that the 2nd option is better, having not
> thought about the implications.

There are traditional permalinks on divisions, my plan would be to add them to
"blocks" - named items like figures and examples. You could put stealth
permalinks on list items, "me", etc

Would we want a traditional permalink on exercises? I'm guessing Oscar says no.
It'd be a lot of clutter, especially if start to flag exercises as easy/hard,
computational/proof, etc.

Rob

[Oscar Levin]

Would we want a traditional permalink on exercises?  I'm guessing Oscar says no.
  It'd be a lot of clutter, especially if start to flag exercises as easy/hard,
computational/proof, etc.

I don't know what you mean by "traditional", but my request is precisely to get access to permalinks for exercises.  I would be in favor of making all permalinks "stealth" unless you are on the instructor edition, and even then, you don't see anything until you hover.  Having this implemented in javascript so it doesn't clutter the screen readers makes sense.

An issue has been created: https://github.com/rbeezer/mathbook/issues/1016.

Oscar.