(78b) Correlating Student Success and Attempts on Auto-Graded, Randomized Homework Questions for Material and Energy Balances

While an interactive textbook for material and energy balances, published by zyBooks - a Wiley brand, has shown excellent student engagement with median reading rates as high as 99% over the past 5 years, using interactive platforms for auto-graded randomized homework has been available for some chemical engineering courses for about a decade. Three types of auto-graded problems will be explored, namely multiple choice, single numeric answer, and multiple numeric answers. With over 500 questions across 9 chapters, more than 80,000 attempts were logged for ~100 students in recent years. No penalty is incurred for an incorrect response, so student can persist until correct and re-use problems for additional practice later in the course. The auto-graded problems are due weekly and account for 5% of the student’s semester grade. Student success in the course, such as final course letter grades, will be correlated with the fraction of auto-graded homework questions answered correctly before the due date. In addition, question order and question type will be examined with respect to attempts before correct. Overall, big data is generated with interactive online homework tools that can help understand student’s engagement, persistence, and success in chemical engineering courses.