Developing for and deploying webwork across disciplines in second-year engineering

Online homework systems provide immediate feedback to students, enhancing student learning. However, paid online homework from textbook publishers or other sources systems can be costly and also raise concerns about student data privacy. WeBWorK is an open-source online homework system that can be setup on local servers, is free to students and has been in use since its development in the mid-1990s. Previous to this work around 200 engineering problems were openly shared on the WeBWorK platform, limiting opportunity for adoption. In order to address this, we have developed, deployed, and evaluated nearly 1000 new engineering problems across a wide range of engineering topics at the second-year level. Student perceptions of WeBWorK have been evaluated using surveys at the start and end of courses where it is deployed. These surveys indicate that students generally prefer the WeBWorK system to other online homework systems they have used. Surveys also indicate that students were generally motivated to both attempt and complete all assigned problems that contributed to their grade, and believed WeBWorK enhanced their learning. The creation of error-free WeBWorK questions was difficult, however the hope is that the ability to re-use and share these questions ensures they provide a higher value over the long term than paper-based homework problems.