Section 4 Technology elements
To facilitate online teaching, our course will rely on several technological solutions. This section provides details on navigating the technology.
Subsection 4.1 Online homework
Online homework is delivered via WeBWorK. WeBWorK is an open source homework system that I maintain on a local server. This service is provided to you free of charge, and your data never leaves campus. 1
The value of WeBWorK is that questions are automatically graded, providing you with immediate feedback on your work. This is an excellent source of guided practice.
To access WeBWorK: simply click the relevant link in Moodle. You will be signed in automatically — there is no user name or password. But keep in mind that if your session times out due to inactivity, you have to return to Moodle to log in again.
Submitting answers: WeBWorK has an automatic preview feature. The mathematics in your answer will be rendered as you type. (You can turn this off in the user settings if you don't like it.) If everything looks good, click the Submit button. The system will immediately respond with “Correct” or “Incorrect”. If your answer is correct, there is nothing more to do: your answer has been recorded, and you have credit for that problem. If your answer is incorrect, you get to try again. (Exception: I typically do not give unlimited attempts for true/false and multiple choice questions.)
Other notes:
Some questions are “scaffolded” — there are multiple parts, and you need to complete one part before being allowed to access the next. For these, you want to click the Preview Answers button, rather than Submit, to check your work and move on to the next step.
If you need to include scientific units in an answer, the automatic equation rendering can cause trouble. There's a little tool bar on the right hand side that lets you switch to text mode to enter units.
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At the bottom of each page is an “Email Instructor” button. If you are stuck on a problem, or if you think there is an error in the programming (it happens!) you can use this to let me know. WeBWorK will send me an email with your message, along with a link to the exact version of the problem you were working on. Often I can figure out where you're going wrong by looking at your answer.
Please do not use the email button to ask me how to solve a problem. That's what the discussion forum is for. It should only be used after you've made several attempts at the problem, or if you see an error message of some sort.
Finally, some general advice: WeBWorK is not a new addition for the online environment. I've used it for awhile. The students who do well in this course are the ones who start their problem sets early. Please do not wait until the due date to begin: it leaves you no time to ask questions! The most effective way to use WeBWorK is to read the relevant portion of the textbook, try the problems, and then ask for help on the ones you're stuck on.
Oh, and please do not wait until you've made 50 unsuccessful attempts at a problem to ask for help. If you haven't figured out a question after 5 or 6 attempts, set it aside, and come back to it a bit later. If you still can't figure it out, go the discussion forum.
Subsection 4.2 Crowdmark
Tests and assignments will be submitted through Crowdmark. Like WeBWorK, Crowdmark is connected to Moodle, so you just have to click a link in Moodle to access your assessment and submit your work. Unlike WeBWorK, Crowdmark lets you do your work using pencil and paper. For ease of reference, I've placed advice for using Crowdmark on a separate page.
Basic advice:
Start each question on a clean sheet of paper.
Use a scanner, or a scanning app on your smartphone. PDF is best, but JPG and PNG files are also supported.
When you submit, make sure your pages are in order, and rotated correctly.