On May 17, 2022, Iowa OER facilitated a panel of three instructors talking about free and open math homework systems. Specifically, they discussed their experiences with the MyOpenMath and WeBWorK platforms which are popular within the mathematics OER community.

The speakers included David Lippman, Pierce College; Bruce Ayati, University of Iowa; and Gavin LaRose, University of Michigan.

A full recording of the session is available on Iowa OER’s YouTube account, and a summary is provided below:

WeBWorK: An Open Source Assessment System

To start off the webinar, Gavin LaRose shared how the WeBWorK tool was developed, how it has changed over time, and where it’s going.

WeBWorK was first conceptualized in the 90’s, inspired by other mathematics tools CAPA and LaTeX. Over the 2000s, WeBWork 2 was developed, comprising a modular system for sharing mathematics homework, similar to what you might see on the platform today. The emphasis was on sharing libraries of quiz and test questions that could be utilized for assessment and practice.

As of 2020, over 1,300 institutions were using WeBWorK, with over 35,000 problems in its library.

How has WeBWorK developed over time?

As of version 2.17, WeBWorK supports:

• Equation rendering in MathJax for accessibility and presentation
• Easy formula entry with the equation editor
• Image and graph embedding/creation for interactive questions
• Automatic grading
• Accessible problem sets
• Various question types: homework, “show me another,” quiz, and exam formats

The “show me another” format will allow students to see a different version of the same question to practice a particular skill or problem type.

In addition to these functionalities, WeBWorK also interfaces with all major Learning Management Systems (Canvas, BlackBoard, etc) through its LTI, it supports Single Sign-On for users to be authenticated for access, and its problems can be embedded in OER authoring tools such as Libretexts.

Gavin shared additional information about WeBWork’s capability and future development, which can be seen in the full webinar. Following, this, Bruce Ayati shared his own experience advocating for the use of WeBWorK at his institution.

Dealing with Pushback Against WeBWorK

Bruce has spent some time trying to convince his department faculty to adopt WeBWorK, but some instructors have been hesitant due to concerns about the extra set-up time for using an open source tool like this.

Many of the concerns around the tool came from the department’s interest in self-hosting an instance of WeBWorK, which would require hiring a developer and the actual work required to manage an institutional instance of the tool rather than using a paid tool that handles that process for the institution.

This was a concern for Bruce, as he stated, because

“I’m concerned about having outside vendors do more and more of our essential mission… Then we both can’t control the quality of the product to the degree that we want [and we can’t] customize it for our particular student body and culture.”

Looking at how you can circumnavigate concerns about funding and staffing while still supporting your students is certainly an important question, and Gavin followed up with a note that there are ways to fund developers for these sorts of open source projects, like augmented technology fees that can support the upkeep of the systems used in-house.

Do you have any recommendations for this sort of problem? How would you handle this at your own institution?

MyOpenMath: Aligning Homework to OER

The final tool discussed during the webinar was MyOpenMath, which was started in 2006 by David Lippman, another of our guest speakers for this month’s webinar.

As David shared, MyOpenMath was created in the model of WeBWork, in order to share a set of open courses developed for the state of Washington more widely. Like WeBWork, MyOpenMath contains homework sets and individual problems, but it also contains courses that have been contributed and shared by users for reuse and implementation by other instructors.

The focus of MyOpenMath, as David states, is “to make it easy to adopt OER.” While the tool, like WeBWork, could technically be used with any textbook, MyOpenMath is intended to be paired with open textbooks specifically, and even contains courses that are free to reuse, which have been assembled in order to support popular open textbooks in Math.

For example, if you were using OpenStax College Algebra textbook, you could search for content that has been created and shared for use with that textbook in mind. The shared courses are organized like a traditional course in your LMS, containing links out to the textbook, additional materials such as examples and videos, and the homework sets themselves.

Homework sets within MyOpenMath come in a variety of types: matching, graphing, multiple choice, etc.

Additionally, questions often come with accompanying “question help” content, where students can click to watch a video describing the specific equation or problem type involved in the question they are completing. And of course, since the content is open, instructors can remix, edit, delete, and reorganize the content they are utilizing to meet their course’s needs.

Why Go Open?

After discussing these two popular tools, the speakers went on to answer questions, which we would recommend you watch in the attached recording. However, one point came up which is worth sharing in this summary. What makes open source tools like these an attractive option in comparison to their paid competitors?

• Lack of Control: If you are putting your own work and time into a commercial tool, you’re then locking yourself into something that may increase in price or change without warning, and because it is proprietary, you can’t just switch to something else or take the content you’ve put into that tool anywhere else
• Cost: Even if a tool like this is $30 or $40 per student, those costs can really add up, especially if the students are asked to bear this cost in addition to textbooks, lab fees, and other costs of attending college. Looking at free alternatives just makes sense
• Quality: The actual quality of the platforms and questions generated by paid tools varies quite a bit, and they don’t always justify their price either in their content or in their ability to accurately grade content. Further, since these tools aren’t open, you can’t fix a problem if you do notice something wrong with it
• Privacy: Many paid homework tools mine student data in order to update and improve their functionality, often without the student’s awareness or express consent

Of course, there are pros and cons to each of these options, and we’d love for you to think through what works best for your own course and students. I hope you enjoyed this month’s webinar and the resources shared by our guest speakers.