I have been told by students that generating unique numbers for the
problem no longer stops taking short cuts to avoid learning (not quite
copying). For most intro level text books, solutions manuals are
available on-line. The students look at the solutions, figure out which
numbers in their version go into the final equation and make the
appropriate substation. That does require a little more thinking than
copying an answer. However, it is not the process that I would like for
my students. If anyone has a way around this, I would like to hear
about it.
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Dean Zollman
-----Original Message-----
From: Krishna Chowdary [mailto:chowdark@evergreen.edu]
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 10:07 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Individualized homework generator
I know that MasteringPhysics (and I believe that WebAssign) has random
variable questions for some problems. In those problems, each student
gets a unique set of numerical values for a particular problem. These
packages also "grade" the problems for you (though they can only
evaluate the final numerical or symbolic answer, and not any of the
intermediate reasoning). This sounds like what you were describing
below. Hope this helps.