CONTACT: Tom Rickey (716) 275-7954

November 12, 1999


HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: INSTANT GRATIFICATION

Fast food. Cell phones. Pizza orders via the Internet. Today's generation wants it all--right now.

That desire for instant gratification plays into the hands of University of Rochester mathematics professors who have created an automated Web-based homework checker that immediately tells students how they're doing on assignments. The instant feedback program, WeBWorK, is being used by nearly 3,000 students mainly at the University of Rochester and Indiana University. Recently the creators of WeBWorK, professors Michael Gage and Arnold Pizer, were honored by the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM) for developing the program.

At Rochester the program is used mainly in calculus and physics classes, where freshmen typically spend long hours wrestling with complex problems long into the night. Students submit homework answers through the Web, and WeBWorK responds instantly, informing students whether their answers are right or wrong.

"Many students work very hard, but they don't get as much out of their homework as they would if somebody were standing next to them. That's what WeBWorK does," says Gage.

"Traditionally, homework is returned to students several days after the assignment is completed, and oftentimes the students don't even bother to look at it. They may not learn from the assignment. WeBWorK either reassures them that they're doing the problems correctly, or it lets them know that they ought to think about the concept a bit more. It keeps students from fooling themselves," says Gage, who accepted ICTCM's Award for Excellence and Innovation with the Use of Technology in Collegiate Mathematics at a meeting in San Francisco.

While the program does not show students how to find the right answer, it does something far more valuable, say their professors: The program spurs students to work together. That's because WeBWorK dishes out a different problem to every student. Once the professor has created the template for a problem, the software customizes it, keeping the concept but generating different numbers for each student. This makes it impossible for students to simply copy each other's answers. Instead, students often end up helping each other learn the concepts necessary to solve the assignment.

"Students are encouraged to help each other, to teach each other," says Pizer. "That's a very useful way for students to learn, and WeBWorK helps make that happen." When a student is stymied, he or she can keep trying, ask a friend for advice, or simply hit a button that sends a note directly to either the professor or a teaching assistant. Oftentimes, Pizer or Gage or an assistant logs on from home late at night, responding to students' urgent pleas for help when an assignment is due.

"When students are having difficulty with a problem, we encourage them to seek help--from a human," says Pizer. "WeBWorK puts teachers directly in touch with more students than normally happens with traditional teaching methods."

With input from peers and teachers, and feedback only a mouse click away, more than half the students keep trying to solve homework assignments until they get all the answers right. Nearly all students who have used the program prefer it over traditional paper assignments. Among the comments from students in a recent class: "I can fix my mistakes while [the] problem is fresh in my mind." "It makes no sense to do a problem wrong and think it is right!" "It gives us a chance to correct our own mistakes, which helps me learn better."

About 830 students at the University use WeBWorK, which is used in most freshmen calculus and physics courses. An additional 1,900 students at Indiana University are using the program, and professors at Johns Hopkins University and SUNY Stonybrook are also using the system with small classes. The National Science Foundation grant that has helped make WeBWorK possible also allows Vicki Roth, assistant dean at the University, to direct a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

The system also allows teachers to keep tabs on which problems students are having the most difficulty with, which questions may have been worded poorly, and which students are especially persistent in understanding the assignment.

"Most students move onto other things once they've submitted their homework," says Gage. "It's a natural reaction: They've done their part, and there's nothing else to do until the homework comes back. Until they're told their answer is incorrect, they don't really think about it. WeBWorK takes that luxury away."

Details on the program are at webwork.math.rochester.edu/.