We love hearing all the ways outstanding WebAssign adopters are making a difference in their students’ lives and wanted to share the following professor spotlight with you all.

Boston University physics professor, Andrew Duffy, has been using WebAssign for the past ten years to help aid his teaching methods and facilitate classroom efficiency.  We are pleased to announce that Andrew was recently named the 2012 winner for the Metcalf Cup and Prize – a prestigious teaching award at Boston University.  This award is given to teachers with significant accomplishments in teaching, pedagogical developments and recognizes the impact teachers have made on their students.  Over the years, Andrew has utilized WebAssign to give students an opportunity to get help in the specific areas they struggle with while cutting down on wasted class time.

Andrew utilizes tools such as clickers, group worksheets, and regular homework assignments in WebAssign.  He uses group worksheets which are done in teams to help facilitate discussion about topics students do not easily understand.  He also uses WebAssign to allow students to attempt a problem multiple times before it marks it completely wrong.  “This gives students the opportunity to slow down and think about why they got the problem wrong and how to solve it,” Andrew explained.

His favorite features about WebAssign are the GradeBook, uploading resources, “practice another version” and being able to propagate assignments.  Andrew also uses WebAssign to host animations for questions and then uses his custom eBook to link questions to WebAssign so students can read more about a specific topic when they are doing the homework. These methods allow him to help his TAs have more time answering questions and interacting with the students rather than spending all of their time grading papers.

Please join us in congratulating Andrew on this exciting teaching award!