WebWork Overview

These are instructions for using WebWork in Dan Dugger's Math 281 class, Fall 2008.

The website for WebWork is:

http://euclid.uoregon.edu/webwork2

When you go there, choose "MA281-Dugger". You will then be asked to enter your username and password.

For MOST people in the class, your username is the same as your DuckId and your password is your nine-digit student ID number. Remember that if your uoregon.edu email adress is "janedoe4@uoregon.edu", then your DuckID is "janedoe4". After you log in to WebWork for the first time, you can choose to change your password to anything you want.

Now, SOME people in the class (very few) have requested that their email addresses be left off of UO class lists. If this is so, then I didn't have your DuckID to enter into WebWork. For these people, your UO student # serves as your WebWork username AND your initial password. Short summary: if your DuckID doesn't let you login to WebWork, try using your student ID # instead.

After you have successfully logged in to WebWork, you will see a choice of homework assignments to work on. At the beginning of the course there will be only **one** assignment there. In general, each assignment has a beginning and ending date---when you can *start* working on it, and when you are not allowed to work on it anymore.

Click on "HW1" to begin working on the first assignment. You will see 17 problems you can work on, and you can do these in any order you want. Also, you can have WebWork create a PDF file with ALL the problems on it. Some people might like to print this out and do the problems all together, only entering the answers into WebWork at the end. Note that WebWork allows multiple tries at all problems; so if you get the answer wrong, you can try again (and again and again).

Note that some of the problems have "randomized" numbers in them. So the problem will be slightly different for you and your neighbor, and the correct answer for *your* problem is probably not the same as the correct answer for your neighbor's problem.

Webwork is very flexible in terms of allowing you to input your answers in mathematical form. For instance, if the answer is 3/5 and you type in "3/(1+4)", then Webwork will recognize this as being correct. But it is very important that you understand order of operations and use them correctly; if you entered in "3/1+4" then WebWork would NOT recognize this as begin correct, because it isn't: 3/1+4=3+4=7.

Especially during the first week or so of using WebWork, there will be lots of times where you are pretty sure you have given the correct answer but where WebWork tells you that it's incorrect. USUALLY this means that you have not used the correct syntax (or operation order) when entering the answer. Try thinking about this, but if you're really stuck and don't understand what's going on you can use the "Email instructor" option. This will send me an email showing me an exact copy of what problem you're working on and what you've entered for the solution, and I will often be able to tell you what you're doing wrong. Please use the "Email instructor" option sparingly, because I don't want to be deluged with dozens of emails every day; make sure you've put some thought into the problem yourself before asking for help.

There is another thing to keep in mind, which is that the WebWork problems can certainly have errors in them. I think the errors have mostly been weeded out at this point, but there still might be a few lying around. When someone finds an error, I'll try to get it diagnosed, corrected, and announced to the class as soon as possible. Let's all try to have some patience through this process, as we pilot this software.