Proposal for limited capacity courses + easy sample course creation

[taniwallach]

As a method to allow easy trial use of WeBWorK, we discussed the option of adding the capability for a course to be limited in capacity:

• limited number of student (and staff) accounts
• limited number of assignments (and problems per assignment)

I suspect we would need to make sure that such courses did not allow bypassing the limits by means of importing a course archive. Certainly managing the setting of whether a course has these limits would need to be handled at a "server" level in a manner which the course.conf file could not override.

Were it possible to request such a limited course via a simple web form, behind some minimal spam prevention (Captha?, eduGain style ID verification) - people could try out WW "easily" in a manner which would hopefully not create huge demands on the server resources.

The option for such courses to have a limited duration and/or to automatically reset to a default state periodically could also mitigate potential "abuse".

This was proposed during a developer's meeting where @dlglin @drgrice1 @pstaabp @mgage and I all participated.