Documentation

Your WeBWorK instance

Each customer receives a dedicated WeBWorK instance on a private domain, typically your-institution.rationarium.org. Your specific URL is communicated in your onboarding packet along with initial administrator credentials.

WeBWorK feature documentation is maintained by the open-source community:

• WeBWorK Wiki
• Community forums
• Open Problem Library

We handle hosting, operations, and integration. Your institution’s course content, user management, and day-to-day pedagogy are handled by your institution’s administrators.

Onboarding

New customers are provisioned quickly. Our infrastructure is automated — a new dedicated WeBWorK instance is typically running within one business day of contract execution. The longest lead-time step is LMS integration (LTI 1.3 configuration), which is included in every contract and coordinated between our team and your LMS administrator.

Your institution handles:

• Course creation and course rollover
• Roster management (enrollment, instructor assignment)
• Problem authoring and set design
• Day-to-day instructor and student support

We handle:

• Server provisioning, operations, and security
• WeBWorK version upgrades and patching
• LTI integration configuration
• Backups, monitoring, and incident response

LMS integration

Every hosting contract includes LTI 1.3 integration configuration as part of the one-time setup fee. We support Canvas, Brightspace by D2L, Moodle, and Blackboard out of the box. Any other LTI 1.3-compliant consumer is supported with additional lead time.

LMS selection is made during contract negotiation and configured before the start of service. If your institution needs to integrate with additional platforms mid-term, contact support — significant changes may require a service amendment.

Training

Every contract includes:

• Two complimentary onboarding sessions at the start of service — one for instructors and one for institutional administrators.
• One complimentary version-update session on request at each annual renewal, covering new features and changes in the upgraded WeBWorK release.

All sessions are delivered virtually. Additional training — problem authoring, model courses, high-concurrency assessment preparation, or custom scripting — is available through our Professional Development program.

Support

Rationarium uses a local-admin-first support model.

1. Instructors and students report issues to their institution’s designated WeBWorK administrator.
2. Your local admin — trained during onboarding — resolves first-line questions.
3. Your designated point of contact escalates unresolved issues to Rationarium.
4. Our support team responds via email and Slack.

Channels:

• Email: support@rationarium.org
• Slack: public support channel for general questions; private channel on request. Your designated POC receives an invitation during onboarding.
• Business hours: Monday–Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM Eastern Time
• Emergencies: email support@ with “URGENT” in the subject for service outages outside business hours. We monitor for critical alerts around the clock.

Escalation: An executive escalation path is provided to your designated administrative point of contact during onboarding.

For full support response targets and service levels, see our Support page.

Status and incidents

Real-time service health is posted at status.rationarium.org.

Uptime checks run against every customer instance every 30 seconds. Confirmed incidents are communicated to affected customers in accordance with our Incident Notification Policy.

You can expect:

• Initial notification within four hours of incident confirmation
• Updates at least daily until resolution
• A written post-incident report within five business days of resolution

Scheduled maintenance

Scheduled maintenance windows are communicated at least seven days in advance via email to your designated administrative contacts, and where feasible are scheduled outside of academic crunch periods (finals weeks, exam windows).

Full details are in our Change Management Policy.

Data handling

Backups and recovery

We maintain encrypted nightly backups of every customer instance with a seven-day rolling retention. Backups are stored off-box in geographically separate infrastructure.

If your institution needs us to restore data after an accidental deletion or similar event, email support. Typical remediation time is four hours from request (see Disaster Recovery Plan, Scenario C).

Routine data exports

Individual courses, gradebooks, and rosters can be exported at any time by instructor-level administrators through WeBWorK’s native export tools.

Custom data extraction

Cross-course, longitudinal, or institution-wide data extraction — for example, periodic multi-course reporting or research datasets — is scoped and priced during contract negotiation and configured before the start of service.

End-of-contract exports

At contract termination, we provide a full data package including a database dump, archived course folders, and WeBWorK configuration files. This package is delivered within thirty (30) days of termination, after which data is deleted from active systems per our Privacy Policy.

Policies

Our customer-facing policies are published and incorporated by reference into every Hosting Service Agreement:

Contacts