Aplia Launches Web-based Interactive Homework System

• By David Nagel
• 05/09/08

Cengage Learning's Aplia division has launched a new Web-based homework system called Grade It Now. The system combines aspects of practice problems with graded problems to encourage students to improve results as they work.

Grade It Now is designed to encourage student effort by providing feedback and by implementing a "try and revise" approach to answering problems. Aplia described it this way:

"The assignments randomize both quantitative and qualitative aspects of questions, allowing students to get the practice they need through multiple attempts of core problems. Each Grade It Now problem covers one core concept, but each subsequent attempt of that problem provides students with a question and answer that are different from previous attempts and different from the attempts of their classmates, reinforcing their efforts and helping them learn."

So attempted answers are factored into the final score for a problem. Detailed feedback is given on each attempt so that subsequent attempts aren't just guesses. The company said that in its studies 83 percent of students improved their scores using the multiple attempts system.

"My students really enjoy the Grade It Now assignments," said Sam Liu, West Valley College (Saratoga, CA) econ professor, in a statement released this week. "The assignments reward persistence and hard work. My students tell me that the multiple attempts to answer the questions really help them understand the material."

Further information can be found at Aplia's site here.