Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Online Homework Assignments and Grading



I teach at a private school, but want to share some thoughts on this
issue. I regard homework as practice work, so why grade it? If students
can understand physics without doing the work, that's great. The test will
show who knows it. Few students are like this. Most students will have to
try some of the problems to understand the concepts/math and prepare for
tests. You can have students email you (or a conference you set up) for
help, or they can ask questions the following day in class. Or maybe TAs
are available in colleges/universities.

This has several benefits:
It puts the responsibility on the students for their own learning.
It reduces cheating/copying.
It increases student understanding.
It decreases grading by the teacher.

I also do (conceptual) peer instruction in class with multiple choice
questions. Students have to be active class participants, challenge their
preconceptions about the world, and be ultimately responsible for their
own learning. This technique has dramatically changed the way I teach and
how students learn physics.

Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu> writes:
I did exactly the same for years - randomly grade a few of the homework
problems. This past year, I found the number of correct responses rise
dramatically. I found out this summer that the students are using an free
online answer source called "Cramster". They basically just copy the
solutions. It covers all the major textbooks.

www.cramster.com

I am now cobbling together problems from many old texts and handing them
out each class. It's more work - but I'm retiring soon so I'll only be
using this technique for a couple of years.

Bob at PC

________________________________________
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
[phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Jack Uretsky
[jlu@hep.anl.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:54 AM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Online Homework Assignments and Grading

Hi all-
I save time for the instructor by grading only a fraction of the
assigned problems. The students don't know in advance which problems will
be graded, so if the don't do all the homework, their grades suffer on a
probabilistic basis.
By the way, I had a recent collaboration with a chemist who
introduced be to a delightful book by Chandler (there is also a solution
book to accompany the text). For the past year I've been dealing with
non-equilibrium thermodynamics (look up Glauber's work to get some
insight).
Regards,
Jack


On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, Polvani, Donald G. wrote:

I will be teaching introductory thermodynamics and electromagnetism at
local community college after an absence of over 5 years. The last time
I taught the course I assigned end of the chapter homework problems,
collected and graded the students answers, and returned the papers to
the students. Sometimes I would go over an especially troublesome
problem on the board after finding that many students had a problem with
it. Homework counts for about 15% of the student's grade.

In the fall, I am considering using an online homework assignment and
grading program (Mastering Physics by Pearson/Addison Wesley which goes
with the textbook "University Physics by Young and Freedman). I have
not used such a system before, but the instructor in the mechanics
course, which precedes the course I will teach, has used Mastering
Physics for homework and likes it. She feels the students benefit from
the extra tutorials and examples which are available as well as the
hints and extra tries that are allowed by the grading systems. The
instructor benefits from the savings in grading time and the automatic
compilation of grades which the system provides.

I'm wondering what the experience of the list has been with systems like
Mastering Physics in introductory physics courses. This is a calculus
based course intended for engineers and physicists. Do you feel online
homework assignment and grading systems are effective for the students
in addition to saving time for the instructor?

Don Polvani
Northrop Grumman Corp.
Undersea Systems
Annapolis, MD 21404
_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


--
"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley



_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l
_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l