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Interactive Homework Problems for the Internet

J. A. Svoboda Clarkson University

Introduction

The Electric Circuits Workout (ECW) is a computer tool designed to aid in both teaching and learning about electric circuits. The ECW consists of HTML documents containing Java applets and so is ideally suited to the Internet.

The Electric Circuits Workout provides students an opportunity to develop and practice circuit analysis skills. It does so by presenting exercises similar to quiz or exam problems. The Electric Circuits Workout poses a problem, then accepts and checks the user's answer. Students are provided with immediate feedback regarding the correctness of their work. Student learning is further supported by extensive help, in the form of worked example problems, available from within the Electric Circuits Workout. The Electric Circuits Workout chooses parameter values somewhat randomly and so provides a seemingly endless supply of problems. This pairing of a solution to a particular problem with an endless supply of similar problems is an important feature of the Electric Circuits Workout. Providing both a detailed solution to a problem and an opportunity to practice similar problems is an effective way to help students learn about electric circuits.

The Electric Circuits Workout has been class tested for several years. This paper presents the lessons learned from that testing.

Some History

The objective of the Electric Circuits Workout is to provide a set of homework problems that are graded automatically and immediately. The Electric Circuits Workout is a modern version of an earlier program called the Linear Circuits Tutor [2]. The Linear Circuits Tutor also provided automatically graded homework problems, but, being 15 years old, has a user interface that seems clumsy when compared to modern programs.

Modern computer languages, like Java, provide the tools required to build a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The Electric Circuits Workout uses a GUI to present a homework problem that is interactive. Each problem consists of an interactive picture and a question. The picture provides the circuit diagrams, plots, tables of data and equations required to pose the problem. The user interacts with the picture using the computer keyboard or mouse. Figure 1 shows the user interface of the Electric Circuit Workout. The plot and equations shown in Figure 1 are features of the Electric Circuit Workout that were not available in the Linear Circuits Tutor.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Svoboda, J. (2002, June), Interactive Homework Problems For The Internet Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10295