WeBWork and Open Educational Resources (OER) Brenda Forland, Red Rocks Community College James Morski, Community College of Denver Justin Sherrill, CCCOnline

Grant Overview In fall 2016, began thinking about alternatives to MyMathLab that achieve the following: Free for students Agility for the instructor Random question generation Instantaneous feedback Ability to embed learning tools Adaptability to students’ response WeBWork is a hosted open-source online homework platform for math and science. James reached out to Brenda Forland and proposed the idea of partnering to apply for a CCCS Innovation Grant.

Grant Overview $95,000 proposal was funded in spring 2017 for May 2017-September 2018. Grant details: CCCOnline installed and hosted WeBWorK while providing IT support. Math departments at CCD, RRCC, and CCCOnline created and implemented questions for MAT 121-College Algebra (Summer, Fall 2017) Pilot began at CCD (6 sections) and RRC (13 sections) in fall 2017. Expansion to 13 sections at CCD and CCCOnline in spring 2018. During summer 2018, CCD and RRCC plan to code questions for MAT 122-College Trigonometry.

Student and Instructor Perspective Student Perspective Instructor Perspective

IT Perspective: Installation Low supporting software costs - Runs on Open-source Linux server and uses MySQL database Written in PERL Low Compute and Disk requirements - 2MB to 12MB course sizes High Memory Requirements - Rough rule of thumb: 3GB RAM per 5 sections Application installation scripts available Configuration is fairly well documented

IT Perspective: Administration Advantages Updates and versioning via GIT repository Fairly reliable once properly configured Supports basic LTI integration with D2L Supports LTI based user account creation Low overall system administrative overhead Challenges Open-source application – limited vendor support Limited ability to automate administrative tasks Difficult to manage non-LTI users Some management tasks require command line access

Project Successes 566 questions for MAT 121 were coded from scratch. WeBWork integration with D2L Customization of WeBWork at each campus Only multi-campus Innovation Grant

Project Challenges Learning new software Learning new coding language Server issue Question bugs

Future Plans MAT 122 MAT 201 (CCD) Physics 211 and 212 (RRCC) Big Ideas Other MAT courses Tutor centers Challenge exams Modules for prerequisite material Placement exam prep Placement exam Other institution interest?

Questions?