Runestone Academy gets Math
Two important announcements this week!
Math books on Runestone academy!
Runestone Academy will host WebWork courses
Read on for the details…
It all began last December at the American Institute for Mathematics Workshop on OER assessments. Its a partnership that makes a lot of sense as our goals and values are so clearly aligned around making great textbooks available to students for free. Whereas the PreTeXt project has put a lot of focus on the write once and publish in many different mediums paradigm, Runestone has put more effort into developing an html only interactive textbook with an integrated LMS offered as a service. PreTeXt books can be published as HTML, EPUB, PDF and other formats including braille! Now PreTeXt books can also be published for Runestone.
I’m pleased to announce that we will be hosting several textbooks written using PreTeXt. beginning today you can use the following books:
Open Resources for Community College Algebra (ORCCA) – Faculty of Portland Community College
A First Course in Linear Algebra – Rob Beezer
Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications – Thomas Judson
Discrete Mathematics: an Open Introduction – Oscar Levin
APEX Calculus (coming soon) – Gregory Hartman, Ph.D., Sean Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. (Editor), Alex Jordan, Ph.D. (Editor), Carly Vollet, M.S. (Editor)
Over the last 9 months I’ve been working with Rob Beezer and the team to integrate PreTeXt books into Runestone. We have things like activecode, short answer, and videos working seamlessly with Runestone. This means that Math teachers can use one of these books on Runestone and get all the benefits of grading, and following student progress. One of our key challenges was getting Runestone to work with WebWork problems. WebWork is widely used in the math world and has an enormous catalog of homework problems.
In order to make the integration work well, we decided that Runestone should host its own WebWork server. This allows us the flexibility to run a custom server that supports the needs of Runestone on our schedule. The load on the server is fairly light for Runestone’s purposes so Alex proposed that we use that spare capacity to serve the community. Alex Jordan is a WeBWorK developer partnering with Runestone Academy for this service, and will be managing the WebWork server and providing faculty with some level of support. Alex has been invaluable in getting the integration complete.
Runestone Academy is hosting free WeBWorK courses for Fall 2020. If you would like to use this service (or if you have questions), Check out our Webwork Page
Active Prelude to Calculus
Active Calculus
Active Calculus Multivariable
ORCCA (basic and intermediate algebra)
This is a great addition to Runestone. We can learn a lot from the WebWork community as they have done an excellent job of evolving their question authoring system over the years.
Why are we doing this? First, we recognize that in the era of remote teaching during a pandemic, some faculty are still searching for an affordable online homework platform. Second, if this semester’s WeBWorK trial is successful, we plan to offer this as an inexpensive but fee-based add-on service to Runestone Academy. We would charge between $50 and $100 per course (not per student). This is part of a multifaceted plan to make Runestone Academy sustainable. All revenue exceeding expenses would support some open source educational technology, such as Runestone and the WeBWorK Project.
In case you did not know, WeBWorK problems and problem sets are easily portable. Any PreTeXt book with WebWork can export and archive of problems for use ona WebWork server. If you try this service in the Fall and would like to move to some other server once Runestone academy starts charging for the service, you will be able to export everything with no hassle.
If you are new to Runestone, this YouTube Playlist will demonstrate every aspect of Runestone from the instructors side. To get a good idea of the student experience you can take a look at The Overview Book The PreTeXt project also has a number of samples available.