Instructor-Driven Enhancements to WebAssign

Our goal at WebAssign is to offer you and your students the most efficient system for delivery of on-line homework. Thanks to the suggestions from our loyal clients like you, we continue to improve our application. This summer we're pleased to announce a new look and feel for the banner on the instructor pages. We're also releasing powerful new tools to help students enter math and chemistry answers, self-enrollment for students, and a simplified course creation process. Our staff appreciates your suggestions and welcomes them in the future, so that we can continue to improve your experience with WebAssign.

New WebAssign Banner

Based on your suggestions, we have updated the WebAssign interface to help you complete your tasks more quickly and smoothly. Right away, you'll notice the redesigned appearance of the banner - where your WebAssign tools and menus appear at the top of the page. All of the menu options you use are still there, but a few of them are more logically and conveniently placed.

Improvements to Creating a Course

Many of you have asked for a better way to create multi-section courses. We have responded by providing you with a new wizard that uses fewer steps and, as the following figure shows, lets you create a whole set of sections all at once.

Student Self-Enrollment

This time-saving feature eliminates your need to create user names and passwords to get students into the right section or course. Now, when you create a course and select the option for self-enrollment, WebAssign will generate a Class Key for each section. You simply tell your students what the Class Key is for each section. Your students will create their own user IDs and passwords.

Improvements to Rostering

If you prefer to enroll students yourself, we have better tools for you as well. You can now upload a file in almost any format. You no longer need to rework the roster in Excel before uploading. You can start by entering a little information, such as the student names, and WebAssign will help you generate user names and passwords. If your school uses WebAssign in other classes, please coordinate your use of a student's user name with your colleagues.

Another improvement to rostering is that, after importing spreadsheets for your rosters, you can now easily delete rows and change column headers right within WebAssign.

If your school uses a course management system that has been integrated with WebAssign, you will continue to roster courses as usual.

mathPad

You let us know that students often found answer entry cumbersome. In the past, they used calculator notation to enter expressions, and then clicked Preview to verify what they had entered. We're pleased to announce the arrival of mathPad, which makes entering symbolic expressions easier and more intuitive.

Now, when a question requires students to enter a mathematical expression, they will click in the answer box to open mathPad beside the answer box. It remains open until they click something other than a mathPad-enabled answer box.

In mathPad, students can click Functions, Symbols, Relations, or Sets to access sets of additional symbols. Within some drawers, such as Sets, they can click arrows to expand the list of tools. They can also pause the pointer over any tool to see its meaning.

Students who prefer can enter most answers entirely with keyboard shortcuts instead of using the mouse. Whether the student uses the keyboard or mouse, they will see their answers in proper mathematical notation as they enter them.

We know that some instructors prefer to code their own questions. To add the mathPad to your questions, include <eqn $PAD='devmath';''> on the corresponding key line in the answer field of your question.

This fall, you can expect to start seeing mathPad in your favorite developmental math titles in WebAssign. And, more enhancements are on the way. Look for an announcement soon about a symbol palette for calculus, which is now under development.

chemPad

Entering complex chemical formulas in a pedagogically accurate way just got easier with our new tool, chemPad. Students can use this palette to enter subscripts for number of atoms, superscripts for ions, square brackets, mid-dots and arrows, electron configurations, Greek symbols, and more. Students can also use chemPad to write orbital configurations. And, we've included lots of keyboard shortcuts. For example, using chemPad students can enter ions with two clicks or with keyboard shortcuts if they prefer. Whether students use the mouse or keyboard shortcuts, they will see everything they enter in correct notation.

We will be adding chemPad to our widely-used chemistry textbooks starting August 2008.

Trash a Class

Created a class or section you don't want? Maybe you were just practicing creating a class or decided not to use that extra section. Now you can easily delete a class or section by clicking the Trash button on the Edit Course Info page.

The class no longer appears in your list of courses or to your students--but you can restore the class if you ever want to bring it back by going to your Trash folder.

Note that only the creator of a course can trash it; not any faculty with access to the course.

Thanks again for your suggestions. If you have a comment or suggestion, email us at info@webassign.net or call us at (919) 929-8181. We want to continue to make WebAssign the instructional tool of your choice.