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The fall semester is winding down, and for many of us this means final exams, end-of-course grading, and student evaluations. It is also a time when our thoughts turn to next semester, so full of potential, and to all the new tools and ideas we want to incorporate into our classrooms.
In this issue:
Changes to the WebAssign Architecture
Thank you for your support and patience during the August/September evening slowdowns. We want to take this opportunity to discuss what went wrong and explain the steps we have taken to make sure that this kind of degradation in system responsiveness does not happen again.
The slowdown resulted from a sudden increase in load on the system, which was caused primarily by a new (and very popular!) feature that allows students to submit a single question at a time. We realized that if we disabled this feature, it would cause significant problems for many instructors who had already begun incorporating this feature into their classes in earnest. Instead, we decided to try solving the performance issue by expanding WebAssign's capacity to handle this increased load.
WebAssign is a highly dynamic system—when faculty and students access their work, every page that is displayed must include the very latest information. Therefore, even when we added significant webserver capacity, the effect was not sufficient to alleviate the slowdown because the webservers were left waiting to obtain the latest information from the database. The complete solution required completely restructuring WebAssign's database architecture to allow for significantly more queries without the possible dissemination of stale information to a user.
We have now accomplished this shift in underlying architecture and can continue to scale the WebAssign system smoothly as usage increases without experiencing slowdown problems. For the past several months, between 30,000 and 40,000 users have accessed WebAssign daily. Our peak usage occurs between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., when 7,000 to 8,000 users are logged in. Over 95% of these users are students.
As part of this "renovation" process, we have analyzed all aspects of the WebAssign system—finding optimizations in code, installing measuring and monitoring systems to alert us to any future issues, and ensuring redundancy and scalability.
We have increased our webserver capacity by over 500% and doubled our database read/write capacity (with an additional doubling on the way soon). We are absolutely committed to providing the highest quality service possible, and we will be happy with nothing less than 99.999% uptime, with the kind of fast response that our users have come to expect from WebAssign.
WebAssign GradeBook Tips
At this point in the semester, it seems that grades are the first thing on students' minds. Here are some suggestions for taking advantage of the WebAssign GradeBook.
- Make sure you click Update within your GradeBook after assignments have been completed so students will see up-to-date averages.
- To track how WebAssign computes student grades, click on the category average for a particular student, and then click the Calculation Detail tab. This will allow you to see what scores have been dropped (if any) and to ensure that the calculation is accurate.
- If category scores are not appearing, you may have set the category to "manual." Set the category to automatic to have WebAssign compute the average for that category.
- In Student View, you can use the right-hand pull-down menu to view the final score for any student. (This feature is only available to faculty and is not accessible to your students.)
- Make sure that your students know that the Scores section only reports the raw scores received. To see how their final grade is computed, they can click on the Final Grade (if you have chosen to display it).
- If you are uploading your own spreadsheet and the grades are not visible to your students, check the Student View tab within the Settings popup to make sure the spreadsheet is set to "Posted."
In the future, our GradeBook will include the ability to have separate "pages" for each grading period. This will allow you to use the final score for each grading period to compute a final average for the course. More options are also planned with respect to grade overrides and adjustments, as well as additional extra credit and special credit options.
What We're Working On Now
It may seem like we haven't announced many new features of late. Rest assured that we are not taking the semester off! Instead, we have been focusing on behind-the-scenes improvements to the WebAssign system that will improve responsiveness and reliability as well as lay the groundwork for continued expansion and additional features.
We appreciate all the feature requests that people send us (keep them coming!) and hope to make many more visible improvements to WebAssign over the next semester. In the next newsletter, we will lay out a roadmap for planned feature releases.
One much-requested feature currently under
active development is an improved "download manager" that will allow
you to obtain spreadsheets of just about any data stored within
WebAssign, including posts to forums, scores and responses, GradeBook
data, etc. We will make an announcement
when this feature is available.
Another soon-to-be-released feature is the ability to set an extension policy (with or without penalties) that allows students to automatically receive extensions without instructor intervention. In addition, a different policy can be set for each assignment category, thereby preventing students from giving themselves extensions on tests and exams. There will also be an option to disable automatic extensions for a particular assignment. Thanks to all those who have offered suggestions for refining this feature.
Blackboard Building Block Available
The institutions listed below are
among those successfully using the WebAssign Blackboard
Building Block this term.
- United States Military Academy
- High Point University
- Montana Tech
- Richardson Independent School District, TX
- University of North Carolina at Greensboro
- University of Oregon
If your institution uses Blackboard version 6, your IT department can download this free Building Block, which will enable you to automatically upload your rosters into WebAssign. The Building Block also allows students to log in to Blackboard and then seamlessly enter WebAssign to do their homework.
End-of-Course Evaluations with MCE
Toward the end of a term, many teachers conduct student course evaluations. Usually this means getting bubble sheets from the department, asking the students who happen to be in the class at the time to fill them out, and then waiting weeks, only to receive static results.
WebAssign offers a better way—a totally anonymous online solution called MCE (MyCourseEvaluation) that allows you to collect all the usual information, as well as written responses. But with MCE, you can filter your class information and responses to get useful, actionable feedback. Find out which comments were made by which group of students. What do the majors think about the course compared to non-majors? Are female students reporting the same impressions as their male counterparts? The ability to obtain targeted feedback that can help you accurately gauge performance and student receptivity is limitless.
MCE comes in two versions. If you
want to get started right now for your class, use MCE Pro. You can
perform a set of evaluations just for yourself, using existing questions
or by writing your own: http://www.myclassevaluation.com/
The version for a whole department
(or school) is MCE Enterprise: http://www.myclassevaluation.com/mceenterprise.htm
Secure Browser Available
Don't get stuck grading hundreds of tests right before the holidays! Give your final exams online this semester. WebAssign's Securexam Browser can ensure that your students are focused only on the test and are not accessing the whole world—and answers—though the Internet.
More Info: http://webassign.net/securebrowser/
Until next time, best wishes
from all of us!
Sincerely,
The WebAssign Team
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