4 Things You Need to Know This Summer in WebAssign

It’s summertime, so make the most out of your spare time! Get WebAssign certified and refresh your skills. Learn how to solve your most pressing course problems using WebAssign’s flexible settings.
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Asking students to demonstrate their work will help you understand their thinking process and reduce their tendency to cheat. How can you get students to submit their work online? WebAssign’s Show My Work feature allows you to give students an opportunity to share their thoughts and can be either optional or graded.
Students can use this feature to enter mathematical expressions and upload a file or an image of their work. You can also reply to students to give feedback using math expressions, images, or files, as you review Show My Work responses.
Follow the instructor help page to learn how to use the Show My Work feature. Also, keep these key strategies in mind when using show my work effectively.

How can you ensure that students are engaged with your course material outside of the classroom? You can view the access logs for each student within WebAssign. The Student Access Log displays when students have opened and submitted assignments. The log also displays all changes to your student score, including extensions and adjustments.
These access logs allow you to:
Find out when and how often students log into WebAssign to complete their practice or work.
To determine if students are actually learning the material or just guessing, you can gauge how long they spend on assignments. Any student who takes too long to complete assignments is a sign that they may need support.
You should identify students who wait until the last minute to submit their work. This could be a problem. You might reward students who submit their work early with extra credit.
The instructor help page explains how to access student logs. To gain insight, review the logs of your students from the last semester and compare them with their final grades. This data may be useful for your next course.

Students can find technology frustrating. This could lead to them focusing on their homework rather than fully understanding the course material. Use these tips to help you get ahead of the curve by customizing your WebAssign assignments and creating a personal learning environment.
Take into account Question Difficulty. As you create your assignments, be sure to review the question difficulty and include a mix between easy and more difficult questions. To avoid students getting overwhelmed, think about how you order your questions. Don’t overload the more difficult questions at the beginning. To increase student confidence, include a few simple questions at the beginning.
Allow students to use learning tools: Students may not know the answer if they are stuck. You want to make sure they have access when they need it. Access a Read It or Watch It to provide learning support for students, especially those with difficult questions.
Partially Credit for Question Attempts: Your students should not skip questions, even if they are more difficult. You can give credit to students who attempt questions, even if they fail. This will encourage students and build confidence.
To apply these learnings and empower learners, create an assignment for your semester course!

Learn how to create scaffolded assignments with WebAssign to increase student confidence, understanding, and academic integrity.
WebAssign allows you to create scaffolded assignments. This is done by placing tutorial questions or learning support at the beginning of the assignment, and then gradually removing students’ access to that support in the second half. Here is a suggested assignment structure:
Start the assignment by giving a multi-step tutorial, either from the textbook, a free resource or your own. This will help students recall how to solve the problem, and refresh their knowledge of important vocabulary.
You can follow the tutorial with shorter questions and learning support enabled. To increase student understanding, use a tutorial with fewer steps than the previous question. (If your WebAssign text contains Expanded Problems (.EP), these could be ideal). You can also offer learning support to those who may need it.
Next, add regular questions with learning support. Once students have seen a few tutorials, they are ready to start to apply the concept.