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Create modmod-based course generation web app #142

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hdoordt opened this issue Jan 31, 2025 · 1 comment
Open

Create modmod-based course generation web app #142

hdoordt opened this issue Jan 31, 2025 · 1 comment
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enhancement New feature or request

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@hdoordt
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hdoordt commented Jan 31, 2025

What is the scope of your suggestion?
Currently users are supposed to work with modmod to define and generator own courses. This means editing a bunch of TOML files, running modmod, published the generated contents in a repository somewhere and come up with steps to build the book and slides. his is quite tedious and not well documented (see #134). I would suggest creating a web application that allows users to define their own tracks easily.

Describe what should be added/changed
Let's create a web application that takes the contents in this repository, and present them to the user as a bunch of blocks representing the modules the topics, and the exercises, the user can then drag into their own track timeline. The user would then click a button upon which modmod is invoked and the generated content is ready to download.

Modmod already supports describing dependencies between topics, although it doesn't enforce them, but we could use this feature to enable people to create tracks to their liking with exercises that don't require any prior knowledge the students will not have when doing them.

This web app can also be used to document how to generate package is supposed to be used by teachers.

Describe a potential alternatives you've considered
You could also implement this as a command line tool which may work well for some people but is probably not suited for a large audience. Futhermore you could leave things as they are.

Additional context
Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

@hdoordt hdoordt added the enhancement New feature or request label Jan 31, 2025
@hdoordt hdoordt changed the title Create modmod-based course generation Webapp Create modmod-based course generation web app Jan 31, 2025
@squell
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squell commented Jan 31, 2025

I've been more and more thinking about: if we have that web interface, do we need modmod at all? Whenever I want to look if something is in teach-rs, I look at full. This proposed webinterface could just select from the stuff that is in full and build a 'reduced scope' version.

Instead of a hierarchical structure with modules, instead we could have some metadata for each exercise/section with a label such as "web" or "embedded", and then you could also select all the stuff that has a particular label.

I.e. organise teach-rs like a google inbox instead of a thunderbird inbox.

That also makes it easier to contribute to teach-rs.

I'd also resist the temptation to try to formalise dependencies between sections and exercises. That's a good idea in principle but it's rarely done in actual academic courses (other than "week 2 builds upon week 1"), and if you formalize it with .toml files you have just introduced depedency management (with all the time sink and slowing-us-down that entails) in a project that's supposed to be about building educational content first and foremost.

I mean if someone clicks together a course where they run into a dependency problem -> that should not happen as (good) teachers will always familiarized themselves first with the material before trying to teach it to others.

2025 will be the year where I don my "KISS" cap 😛

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