#fuckwebassign — Public Fediverse posts

Math teachers when I was a kid: Write down every step. Show your work!

Math teachers today: Use WebAssign, which only evaluates whether you have the right answer in the exact right format and doesn't even give you a space to write down your process.

I've taught coordinated classes where students have both paper assignments and WebAssign. I've watched students carefully write down every step when doing a problem on paper, only to see the exact same students struggle to do everything in their head when they try to answer a question on WebAssign.

Something about sitting in front of a laptop looking at the answer box leads them to not want to write down their steps. I don't know why: I'm not a psychologist. But I do know that the habits students are getting from WebAssign is really bad for doing math.

#FuckWebAssign #TeachingMath