ABOUT HOMEWORK (8/31/03)

 

Homework is an essential part of Physics 121, because it shows you what you really know and what you really don’t know. A large part of the physics is surely learned, or at least solidified, in doing homework. Therefore the Homework is to be taken seriously; if it is given short shrift, one’s education in physics suffers, and it will show up in one’s exam scores.

 

About WebAssign

 

Homework Assignments in this course will be managed using WebAssign, http://www.webassign.net/, a web software system for managing course assignments. WebAssign will present the HW assignment schedule, generate distinct individual assignments for each individual student by randomizing the numerical parameters in each assigned problem, allow the student to store partial results before submitting the solutions, and grade the solutions immediately when submitted and report the results. WebAssign will also allow the student to re-do and resubmit the assignment twice more. But the third submission is the last and the grade it (or the last submission before the deadline if less than three), achieves will be the recorded grade. Access to WebAssign will require each student to purchase an access card at a local bookstore or at the WebAssign site. WebAssign is a required capacity for this Physics 121 course. Note that every student is assigned similar, but numerically unique problems by WebAssign, and no student’s assignment will be the same as the corresponding textbook problem.

 

Before submitting any solution to WebAssign, the student should note the WebAssign conventions, which can be displayed by clicking the “GUIDE” tab on the WebAssign site. Otherwise the Student’s solution may fall victim to notational inconsistency and the fact that the computer is, after all, merely comparing the symbols submitted by the student to the symbols it generated. If they don’t match, it will reject your symbols, and tell you your answers are wrong: it reads what you type, not what you mean, and it reads literally and in its own language only.

 

Weekly HW Assignments Have Deadlines for Last WebAssign Grading

 

A homework problem set will be assigned weekly covering current reading, lab and lecture material. Typically an assignment will consist of some combination of five to ten conceptual questions (CQ’s), problems (P’s) and quick quiz (QQ’s) questions, selected from the textbook. Out of these some selected examples, labeled by asterisks in the assignment, will have nonzero grading weight of about 4 points each. Thus a typical HW set might have ten problems, of which five are asterisked for grading with a total of about 20 points. Only the solutions submitted for these asterisked problems will affectthe HW grade.

 

The first assignments are listed on the WebAssign site. Each student should keep a notebook of his actual homework work, which he can make available for review by our course personnel in case of difficulty or complications of the system. If he has been careful to bring each solution to almost-final form as an algebraic, rather than a numerical expression, then these notes will also facilitate his completing any similar, but numerically randomized, assignment which WebAssign might sometimes present, or identifying and correcting any error which causes WebAssign to reject the solution.

 

The homework assignments are offered as a guide and an aid to the student's study program, -more a learning tool than an exam. The task is not primarily to get the right answer but to learn the physics and, if necessary, the math to complete the problems easily and reliably. The student should first understand the physics, then complete the assignment and then check his methods against the posted solutions.  If one cannot solve a given problem, the solutions may show him what he was missing.

Occasionally an in-class quiz may be given on homework related material. The grades for such quizzes will be treated as raw HW scores to be added into the semester's total raw HW score, RHS, as discussed under GRADING.

 

Various Kinds of Help with Homework are Available

 

Alternatively, one might consult the Student Solutions Manual and Study Guide for Serway and Faughn, 6th Edition, which presents full solutions for problems whose number in the textbook is enclosed by a box. Or, if the problem is labeled “web” in the textbook, one can go to http://www.series.brookscole.com/serway , select <College Physics, 6th edition> and click on the “Physics Now” icon to see a step-by-step solution to the problem. This might be especially helpful to a student who feels that he has no idea what the first step is to a solution. These “web” step by step solutions might also be generically helpful in solving some other problems by analogy. 

 

(The “Physics Now” site at http://www.series.brookscole.com/serway also offers animated versions of some of the diagrams in the textbook which can enrich their content by allowing one to alter the assumed parameters and see the consequences, or to watch things actually move. (The required Access Code symbol required to reach “Physics Now” is supplied in  each new Serway and Faughn 6thEd. text.) In addition, the <brookscole/serway> site offers self-evaluative quizzes and chapter-by-chapter review summaries as self-help aids to the students using Serway and Faughn's College Physics, 6th edition.

 

Homework problems are of course primary topics for the scheduled discussion sections, and for personal consultations with the TA’s or the lecturer, who will all be available during specific office hours. In addition, the Physics Department's Slawsky Clinic offers Physics 121-122 students help, especially with problem solving (MWF,10AM-3PM & Tu-Th,11AM-3PM). Finally do not overlook your fellow students as a chance to clear up lingering questions or get new ways of looking at the physics. There is no prohibition against learning how to do HW problems from fellow students, and then using what you've learned to complete the assignment on your own.

 

Additional Problems offered for Optional Exercises

 

In addition to the HW assignments, we will post as optional exercises blocks of problems from the text, for the sole purpose of making as many problems as possible available via WebAssign for students’ personal use. WebAssign will assess your solutions for any of these problems, but the grades will not count. For these sets many (100) repetitions are allowed. 

 

Learn however you can, and then do it yourself

 

Clearly we encourage every student to use all of the help and advice he/she can get from other people and other sources to learn how to complete every homework assignment correctly. But each student has also to carry out the solutions he submits personally and on his own. To learn how to do it, use all the help you can get; but finally you must do it yourself. To simply copy solutions, or to get others to do the assignment for you, is dishonest, and it will jeopardize your exam scores, which have the biggest effect on grades, by depriving you of the understanding you need. 

 

Don't resubmit before understanding previous errors

 

When reasonably confident that you know how to solve the problems, then solve them correctly, and submit your results to WebAssign for grading. Hopefully all will be correct the first time. If not, WebAssign will identify wrong answers, and you can analyze and overcome your errors before resubmitting thesolutions. Do not rush to make your second submission before you fuly understand your first errors. You have only three opportunities.

 

“80% Threshold” Should be Surmounted by All

 

By this process we expect that every student can do nearly all of his Homework assignments correctly and handily achieve the “80% is enough” threshhold to obtain the maximum possible score for the Homework component of the Total Course Score.

 

The “80% is enough” philosophy is applied as follows. From the sum of all of his raw Homework Scores accumulated over the semester, an adjusted homework score, AHS, will be computed for each student as follows.  Every student who accumulates 80% or more of the maximum possible score will be assigned the same maximum adjusted score of 100; others will be assigned an adjusted score equal to the percentage of 80% which they achieved.  The principle is that homework is a learning tool, not an exam. If one does it well enough, one gets full credit for it. The 80% threshold allows some margin for error during this learning process. 

 

It May Be Hazardous to Fall Short of “80% Threshold”

 

However, in order to allow it to be added properly to the Lab and Exam components to form the Total Course Score, this adjusted homework scores will be renormalized to an average value of 70 and a standard deviation of ±20 to obtain the Normalized Homework Score (NHS). (It is NHS, not AHS which contributes 15% to the Total Course Score, as described in GRADES.) Under this procedure, to fail to achieve the maximum is dangerous to your grade, because the renormalization can produce serious reductions for a few students who fail to make that threshold when nearly everyone else does so. On the other hand, the 80% threshold is within reach of everyone who spends the effort, so that there is no reason why anyone should fail to achieve it.