1. Supporting Discrete Structures Courses with a web-based tool Christelle Scharff, Pace University, NY Andrew Wildenberg, SUNY Stony Brook, NY

2. Context

3. Discrete Structures 1 or 2 semesters required by the Computing Curricula 2001 http://www.acm.org/sigcse/cc2001 Topics include: –Propositional Logic –Number theory –Set theory –Functions –Recursion –Induction

4. Use of WeBWorK WeBWorK is a web-based software freely available developed by University of Rochester to deliver and check homework. Dedicated to the evaluation of free-form symbolic answers (i.e. formulae) Creation matching, true/false, multiple choices and more advanced problems http://webwork.math.rochester.edu/

5. For Students: –Easy of access –Randomized problem sets (each student gets a different but equivalent problem) –Immediate feedback –Experimentation –Completion of the homework For Professors: –Complete management of the course –Create and administer an exam –Monitoring of the progress of the students –Automated grading and delivery of solutions –Control of cheating

6. Description and results

7. WeBWorK problems for Discrete Structures Used at SUNY Stony Brook to teach more than 2000 CS, IS and CE students Help students learn, employ, experiment and enjoy Discrete Structures concepts linked with: –Propositional logic, number theory, set theory, functions, recursion, functional programming and SML

8. Students’ feedback + “You learn more from WeBWorK because you know right away if your answer is right.” + “You can’t cheat. It shows you know the material.” + “I can keep trying until I get it right”.

9. Results of the surveys 22% of the students said they preferred paper-based homework to web-based homework. 52% said that logic was their favorite topic in the class. 8% of the class said they felt it was easy to cheat on homework.

10. Examples

11. Oliver: an OnLine Inference and VERification system for Propositional Logic

13. Number theory problems

14. Functions problems

15. References Computing Curricula 2001, CS volume, www.acm.org/sigcse/cc2001/ A. Pizer and M. Cage, The WeBWorK System (webwork.math.rochester.edu) http://www.csis.pace.edu/~scharff A. Wildenberg and C. Scharff, Oliver: an OnLine Inference and VERification system, FIE 2002. C. Scharff and A. Wildenberg, Teaching Discrete Structures with SML, FDPE 2002.