We just completed a 3-day workshop on WeBWorK. It's interesting to see the directions this is taking.
- We can now assign free response questions. This was more or less introduced last summer if I remember correctly and the feature has been tested by several people. The submitted answers are listed, and each answer can be graded by choosing a grade 0-25-50-75-100 form a drop down menu. One of my colleagues who tried it said it was fast to grade and easy to use.
- Instructors can use "achievements" if they choose to. This will assign "badges" to students if they do certain things. For instance if they work a certain number of problems, do problems before a certain time in the morning, etc. This is part of the so-called game-ification of WeBWorK. I have not tried it yet, but when I asked my students last Fall more than half indicated they might find this kinda fun.
- There are now more problem sets for statistics. Problem sets have been classroom tested at several colleges and universities and are ready to be rolled out. This will be very nice to have as we may expect to be teaching more stats courses due to the increased requirements at the MCAT.
- Related to the previous item is work being done to incorporate the statistics package R into WeBWorK. This is still some time off (months???), but that will help developers create more problems more easily.
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