[TOS] Introduction

[Heidi Ellis]

Welcome Jason!

WeBWorK is an interesting project. It appears that the site has some tasks that are appropriate for newbies to open source and there are good directions for developers on where to start. This could provide some interesting student projects!

Heidi Ellis

Heidi J. C. Ellis
Chair and Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Information Technology
Western New England College
1215 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01119-2684
ellis at wnec.edu
http://mars.wnec.edu/~hellis

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org [mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of me
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 10:35 PM
To: tos at teachingopensource.org
Subject: [TOS] Introduction

Hi All,

I've just joined the list and I'm writing to introduce myself.  I'm a
mathematician at the University of Missouri
in Columbia, Missouri.  I'm closely involved with the WeBWorK project
(webwork.maa.org).  WeBWorK is an
open-source perl-based online homework system for math courses.  It's
widely used:

http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/WeBWorK_Sites

Compared to publisher based systems, WeBWorK is far more sophisticated
in terms of the mathematics it can handle.
But, the publisher systems tend to be shinier. :)

WeBWorK began development iin 1995 by Profs. Arnold Pizer and Michael
Gage at the University of Rochester
Department of Mathematics. It is now supported by a team of developers
from several institutions and is used for a
variety of subjects.  Also, the Mathematical Association of America,
one of the two main professional societies for mathematicians,
has recently 'adopted' webwork.  They host courses for math courses
around the country and provide us with server space for our
svn repositories, forums, wiki, and mailing lists.  WeBWorK is also
supported by the NSF.

We're very much trying to 'do' open-source right; we have a great
community of math faculty from around the US and abroad who
use webwork at their institutions, write documentation, contribute on
the fourms, author webwork problems, and contribute to
webwork development.  But, we're pretty much all mathematicians by
training (rather than developers, technical writers, community
managers, etc.), and in spite of the longevity and success of WeBWorK
so far, we could learn a lot from people involved with
other open-source projects.  So, I was very excited to come across the
teachingopensource.org site, and I'm looking forward to learning
from you all and  contributing where I can.

If you're interested to know what kind of development is going on, the
following page on our wiki lists some ideas we put up for a Google SOC
application for last summer (sadly, not funded).

http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code_projects

And, I invite you to take a look at webwork and let us know if you are
interested in contributing.  For development, knowledge of perl,
javascript or html5/css3 would help, but like any other open-source
project, there are a lot of ways to get involved.

Also, to that end, we would be very  much like to explore the
possibility of participating in the POSSE program.  We've communicated
some with Mel about
this, with the idea of perhaps running a POSSE program either
alongside or in support of a workshop that we already have in the
works.
This past summer, a colleague and I submitted  a proposal this summer
to the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), to run a so-called
PREP (Professional Enhancement Programs) workshop at the end of June
2011 intended to bring together professors from around the country
interested in contributing to WeBWorK. Happily, that has been funded,
and perhaps there is an opportunity for collaboration here.

But, either way, I'm excited to be a part of this community, and,
well, that's my introduction!

Thanks,
Jason

-- 
Jason Aubrey, PhD                          Office: 219 Math Sciences
Department of Mathematics              Office Phone: (573)882-4473
University of Missouri - Columbia       Voice Mail: (573) 416-0784

Mailing Address:
202 Mathematical Sciences               Department Fax: (573)882-1869
University of Missouri                        Department Phone: (573) 882-6221
Columbia, MO 65211 USA
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