[LON-CAPA-users] getting started converting problems from classic CAPA to LON-CAPA

[Gerd Kortemeyer]

Hi,

On Apr 19, 2013, at 5:24 PM, Joseph Mingrone <jrm at mathstat.dal.ca> wrote:
> 
> Our department would like to convert problems from classic CAPA to
> LON-CAPA.  We have LON-CAPA 2.10.1-2011113023 up and running in
> standalone mode.  I've run the converter to create .problem files from
> our .qzp files, but it's not clear to me how I supply these converted
> files to LON-CAPA.  How should I supply the converted .problem files
> to our standalone LON-CAPA installation?

You or your domain coordinator needs to make an author account in LON-CAPA. The .problem-files then need to be loaded into your construction space, which is under /home/(username)/public_html - ownership of the files needs to be www:www. If you have a lot of problems, you likely want to sort them into subdirectories.

From then on, the rest is done in the web interface. Login as that author, enter your construction space. You should be able to see your problems, test them, and publish.


> 
> I've also read through the authoring manual, but it seem to describe a
> different version of LON-CAPA.  For example, it talks about a remote
> that should pop up, which we don't see.  What is the best resource for
> understanding the language used by LON-CAPA?

It still is. The Remote is optional, by default it's off. In any case, you can access all functions. The remainder of the author manual is universal and up-to-date.


> 
> I envisioned creating new problems locally by editing the source code
> in a text editor, then uploading them.  Is this how you create new
> problems, or do you simply use the "Simple Problem" link in the course
> editor?


No, don't use Simple Problem. In construction space, you have two ways of authoring problems: a pure text editor (EditXML) and what we usually call the "colorful editor" (for reasons that will become obvious), which you can access via Edit.

You should get your server connected to the cluster, there is a lot of good stuff out there :-)

Newer versions of LON-CAPA allow you to block offloading of sessions to other servers.

- Gerd.