Dear Instructor,

The fall semester is here! We've been doing a lot of work this summer to get ready to serve a record number of students and instructors.

As part of this effort we've improved our application's performance to make sure the WebAssign application remains quick and responsive. We're all set to handle thousands of students simultaneously, so when you give a test even if all of your students log in at the same moment you shouldn't see any slowdown at all.

We've also improved the way refunds are processed, so students who purchase online can get their money credited back to them faster if they drop a class. Students can also pay online with their PayPal account rather than credit card, if they prefer. As a reminder, students are eligible for a full refund for any reason within 14 days after an online purchase.

Automatic Updating of Assignments with Old Textbook Questions

Today we have released a feature that makes it extremely easy to make sure your assignments have the "latest and greatest" version of textbook questions. We are always working to improve the database of questions in WebAssign, both to fix bugs as they are reported and to add features like worked-out solutions (for select textbooks).

In the past, you might have opened an assignment from a previous semester and seen that some of the questions were listed as "new version is available." To swap out those questions with the new versions, though, was fairly tedious.

Now, if you look at an assignment that has textbook questions that have been updated, you'll see an Update All button just above the question list on the Assignment Editor. If you have not yet scheduled this assignment to your new class, you can update all questions to the latest version just by clicking that button.

If you already have scheduled assignments for your fall classes and want to see if any include an updated question, simply click on the assignment name from the ClassView page. This will take you to the Assignment Editor. If the assignment includes any textbook questions with updates available, you will see an Update All button just above the question list. You can update all questions to the latest version just by clicking that button. (If your students have already started working on the assignment, however, it is probably better not to update in this way, as doing so could cause them to have to start the assignment over.)

Most instructors who reuse assignments from a previous semester do so either by finding the original assignment and clicking Schedule or by going to the original class and clicking Propagate. Now, whenever you schedule or propagate an assignment that has updated textbook questions, WebAssign will automatically make a copy of it and replace any old textbook questions with the latest versions. Making a copy of the assignment leaves your student's scores for previous classes unchanged by the new question updates for that textbook.

Viewing Only What You Need with Our Improved Search

Now, when you search in WebAssign, you will only see results from open collections, public questions, and textbooks that are associated with your current classes. If you find it, you know you can use it!

This avoids the confusion that used to occur when our search returned results from textbooks that you could not use due to copyright issues. We hope that this change makes your searches more useful.

As always, thank you for your support. If there is anything we can do to help you, don't hesitate to let us know!

The WebAssign Team