Sgoilear

I just recently finished two college classes that used exclusively online homework. One of them was a physics class using the Mastering Physics system and the other was a chemistry class that used a set of online quizzes as homework.

After finishing the classes and doing well in both of them I'm curious about how effective online systems for homework are. I understand that it certainly makes life much easier for the TA when it comes to grading but does that benefit outway the actual learning that goes on from doing homework out by hand? I personally found both systems to not be effective for my style of learning and ended up going back to the tried and true method of working each problem out by hand and keeping track of all the steps.

Both programs allowed people to simply open the book to the correct page, find the equation and plug in the correct answer. With hand written homework you must show work to get credit but with an online system there's not an equivalent way to measure a student's understanding until the test. Both classes used quizzes in recitation sections but a large number of people skipped the recitations because the quizzes in both classes were simply bonus points.

What I'm interested in are thoughts on how effective the online homework systems that others here have used are and how should responsibility for learning coursework be balanced between students and the university?

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"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." -George Bernard Shaw