TY - JOUR
T1 - Positive statistical impact of online homework assignments on exam and overall course grades
AU - Maroo, Shalabh C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2019.
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - This work evaluates the impact of introducing homework assignments, which are 1) assigned and submitted online, 2) algorithmic, and 3) not from the course textbook, on students' homework performance relative to their exam and overall class performance. The aforementioned technique of online homework assignment is compared to the traditional technique where homework problems are assigned from the course textbook with students submitting the solutions on paper. These two (paper and online) homework techniques are applied to the undergraduate junior course on 'Heat Transfer', a required course for students majoring in mechanical engineering, over two separate semesters (Spring 2016 and 2018). The findings show that, compared to traditional paper homework technique, the aforementioned online homework technique improved the correlation between homework scores and exam scores by over 99%, and between homework scores and overall end-of-semester scores by over 43%. The latter may be slightly skewed due to a 5 percentage-point increase of online homework contribution in overall score, but nevertheless shows a significant improvement. Quizzes are also analyzed for the two semesters. Thus, online homework assignments, if done correctly, can be a powerful tool to enhance the educational impact in an engineering class.
AB - This work evaluates the impact of introducing homework assignments, which are 1) assigned and submitted online, 2) algorithmic, and 3) not from the course textbook, on students' homework performance relative to their exam and overall class performance. The aforementioned technique of online homework assignment is compared to the traditional technique where homework problems are assigned from the course textbook with students submitting the solutions on paper. These two (paper and online) homework techniques are applied to the undergraduate junior course on 'Heat Transfer', a required course for students majoring in mechanical engineering, over two separate semesters (Spring 2016 and 2018). The findings show that, compared to traditional paper homework technique, the aforementioned online homework technique improved the correlation between homework scores and exam scores by over 99%, and between homework scores and overall end-of-semester scores by over 43%. The latter may be slightly skewed due to a 5 percentage-point increase of online homework contribution in overall score, but nevertheless shows a significant improvement. Quizzes are also analyzed for the two semesters. Thus, online homework assignments, if done correctly, can be a powerful tool to enhance the educational impact in an engineering class.
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M3 - Conference Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078794072
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
T2 - 126th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Charged Up for the Next 125 Years, ASEE 2019
Y2 - 15 June 2019 through 19 June 2019
ER -