Good Technology for Bad Grades
With the return of school comes new gripes, as usual. There are plenty of things to rant about, especially as a student in the College of Engineering at Purdue. The topic that has bugged me the most this year is the use of online homework web sites as a substitute for real human interaction. In an effort to save both time and hassle, classes are increasingly turning to using online homework as a means of measuring a student’s progress and it drives me insane. I’ve used WebAssign and OWL as well as various class specific online homework modules. After dealing with online homework for over a year I’ve come to realize many of the pitfalls that make online homework a broken solution. A lot of these examples are specific to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes, so you liberal arts folks can go ahead and run away.