Computer Based Homework

Computer based homework was used in both a Mechanics of Materials course and an Engineering Materials Course. A full analysis of using computer based homework with a Learning Management System is in "Evaluation of Canvas-Based Online Homework for Engineering", however, the basic result is that there is a definite positive impact of the immediate feedback and re-attempts made possible by the computer based homework.

The trend in textbook publishing is to provide not only digital/online versions of textbooks but to also provide online homework for students as well as exam questions for instructors. Often the online homework is linked to the online textbook, so if a student is struggling with the homework they can navigate straight to the appropriate section of the book that covers that theory. Before this was available (and it is still not available for all textbooks) learning management systems like Canvas or Blackboard had the capability of serving quizzes to students. Initially only multiple choice quizzes were available but currently there are many types of quizzes available, for example, fill-in-the-blank, matching, essay, file-upload etc. but the type of quiz that seems to be the most useful for online homework is the "formula" question quiz. This type of quiz allows the instructor to define variables in the problem statement and then provide a valid range for each variable. When the quiz question is served to the student, Canvas will choose a random number within the appropriate range for each of the variables. Therefore, each student will have the same problem but with a unique combination of values for each of the variables in the problem.

Where the formula question really improves student learning is that you can write an equation that uses the variables in the problem statement that solves the problem. That way when the student solves the problem and submits an answer they receive immediate feedback if the question was answered correctly. When setting up the quiz the instructor can choose to allow the student to re-take the quiz if they want to. This way, if the student does not answer the question correctly the first time, they can choose to retake the quiz (homework) and solve the problem again, with all new values for each of the variables. This immediate feedback with multiple attempts to solve the problem significantly improves student performance on homework, but more importantly on exams.

Here are some of my best practices for setting up formula quiz questions in Canvas

• Give 4 attempts to solve the problem. After trying a number of different attempts allowed, I have found that 4 is the best. Any more than that and students give up after not solving it four times and actually feel more frustrated than if they failed after 4 attempts. Any less than four and students feel they could do if they "had just one more attempt"
• Write the solution equations in a text editor and copy/paste them into Canvas. If you make a mistake and don't catch it, you have to write the entire equation over again
• You can only have one final answer. So, for example, if you give a randomly generated set of data and would like the students to find the mean and the standard deviation, well you get to choose one. The solution to this is to make a third answer that requires the use of both answers. In this example you could as what is the mean+standard deviation
• I've used formula questions to serve design problems with variable values to the students. These questions were not auto-graded by Canvas and had to be manually evaluated (it was novel designs). In this case it is useful to create an Excel Workbook when writing the question that allows you to input the randomly generated values and provides any required intermediate calculations to make assessing the design quicker and easier