Dear Instructor,

It is the first Tuesday of the month again, and we have just rolled out over 40 enhancements to WebAssign.

First-Tuesday releases will include improvements, small visual/wording clarifications, and minor fixes. Major application changes will be released mid-summer and late December so as not to disrupt active classes.

Below are some May 2009 improvements we think you might find interesting.

Self-Enrollment Message

Several instructors have requested the ability to provide a message that their students will see during the self-enrollment process. For example, you might want to instruct students to use their school email address during registration. When you turn on self-enrollment, you now have an option to add this message for your students.

We are also now sending an email confirmation to students when they successfully complete the self-enrollment process so they have a record of their login information for future reference.

Communications Improvements for Forums

Instructors who have multi-section courses often have a shared class forum that is available to many or all sections of that course. Previously, it was possible to set up multi-section forum access during the forum creation, but it wasn't possible to change the section access later.

We have now filled that gap; when viewing the forum, open the Settings window and you will be able to change which sections have access to that forum.

We have also clarified wording within the Ask Your Teacher area.

Assignment Feature Pooling Enhancement

Question pooling allows you to create an assignment where each student gets a different set of questions, randomly chosen from the question pools that you specify.

Previously, if you had a pool of 10 questions, the most you could have WebAssign display was 9 out of those 10. By request, we have changed the limit to allow you to use all 10 of the questions in the pool, so that each student gets the same questions from that pool but in random order.

One use of this is that you could have an assignment set up so that questions 1–10 are pooled questions that are displayed in random order, followed by an "in conclusion" or "honor code" question. In other words, you can now effectively randomize the question order for all questions on the assignment except for one.

Graphing Questions Grading Improvement

When graphing a line, some students start by placing two points, as they would do on paper, and then drawing the line through those two points. For most lines, this would still be marked as correct. However, if the student was drawing a dashed line to define an area, WebAssign would have marked the answer as wrong because the points technically change the mathematical meaning of the graph.

We have now changed this grading rule, recognizing that the points the student is placing in this instance are not intended to be mathematical objects. Since they are just there to help the student place the line properly WebAssign ignores them.

Also, did you know there are short videos inside the graphing help for students who might be having trouble understanding how to use the graphing tool? Many students missed those as well. We have changed the message that students see when they view an empty graphing tool to include a link to the videos so that students can more easily find the help they need.

We hope you find these changes helpful. As always, let us know what you would like to see in WebAssign next!

Anne Squire
Director of Customer Service