With the steady increase in the size of introductory classes throughout the College of Natural Sciences during the 1990s, University of Texas professors C. Fred Moore and Herbert Ward searched for a way to meet the challenges of grading and record-keeping placed on professors and teaching assistants.

Their solution: The University of Texas Homework Service, which has made large classes manageable and provided an easily accessible web program for schools nationwide.

The UT Homework Service is an interactive program that allows college and high school teachers from around the country to customize homework assignments for their students via the Internet. This free service was intended as a substitute for assigning standard problems at the end of textbook chapters. Now teachers can assign problems, keep records of student progress, and grade the assignments online. This leaves more time for one-on-one interaction between students and teachers in the classroom.

Students download the assigned problems, solve them, then enter the answers into the program and receive immediate right/wrong feedback. Explanations are provided to students after the due date. The service keeps a record of each student's progress, storing grades and a semester summary. Access is password protected.

Available to teachers and students 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Homework Service provides inventoried "problem banks" with more than 22,000 different questions for high schools and colleges in the subjects of algebra, pre-calculus, finite math, calculus, physics (in English and Spanish), physical science, and chemistry. The unique, algorithm-based problems ensure that questions are different, and that every student receives a different version.

In addition to the problems already in the banks, teaching assistants at UT develop new questions, and more importantly, train other teachers to create their own problems. Every teacher using the program has the opportunity to comment on and/or to upgrade any question. According to Professor C. Fred Moore, "This has made the problems in the Homework Service much better than those used in most standard assessment programs." He adds that "excellent problems are jewels," and that the contributions of teachers from across the country will help the Homework Service to grow even stronger.

Patsy McDonald from Marble Falls High School (Texas), for example, has been instrumental in promoting the UT Homework Service in high schools by conducting workshops at math and science conferences.

Whether or not the Homework Service will gain the widespread popularity that textbooks now enjoy, the successful program is something in which its creators can take pride. The service has been used by students in introductory science classes at UT Austin since 1991. More than 13,000 students at 250 different schools nationwide took advantage of the program during the fall 2000 semester alone. Nearly 300,000 homework questions are posted and graded each week.

The UT Homework Service has recently caught the attention of the Texas Legislature. The Legislature's Education Committee is considering augmenting the state-mandated TAAS initiative (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills) by using the UT Homework Service in order to give teachers hands-on control over TAAS questions and to give students a daily or weekly dose of the evaluation and assessment process.

Dax Gonzalez (B.S. public relations '00)

Links:

UT Austin:

• UT Homework Service

  • Overview for Instructors

• College of Natural Sciences

  • Department of Physics

    • Professor C. Fred Moore