Open Education

The Open Education Initiative (OEI) leads implementation of multiple homework software replacement projects at Virginia Tech. These projects  are designed to:

• unbundle text and homework access code decision-making and purchase processes,
• expand faculty choice and control over regarding homework/assessment systems and curricular materials in general,
• reduce costs for students, and
• create opportunities for subject matter experts to collaborate in creation, review, and sharing of assessment strategies, tools, and content. 

Options currently available include: 

WeBWorK
WebWorK is a Canvas-integrated open-source online system for delivering and grading custom homework assignments in STEM courses. It has similar features to commercial products like WebAssign, MyLab, and MasteringPhysics, but has no cost for students. 

2025-26 is year three of a three-year pilot project funded by the University Libraries and VT's Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs with support from faculty in the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics. Pilot goals: 

• provide an alternative assessment environment for faculty, 
• remove homework access code fees for students, and
• reduce the overall cost of textbooks and other course materials by enabling students to use older editions of textbooks and enabling faculty to adopt open educational resources or open textbooks. 

WeBWorK replies on the problems customized from the Open Problem Library (OPL) and those created by OEI-funded faculty for use in their course and eventual contribution to the OPL. The WeBWorK Open Problem Library (OPL) contains problems contributed by faculty from many institutions that have used WeBWorK. Currently, there are approximately 35,000 problems in the OPL, and new problems are added regularly. The OPL was initially formed from several of the original File Based Problem Libraries, and includes all of the problems from the Arizona State, Rochester, California State-Long Beach, and the University of Virginia libraries. It also contains most, if not all, of the problems from Union College, the College of New Jersey, Dartmouth, Ohio State, Northern Arizona University, and Indiana University. Once known as the National Problem Library (NPL), the Open Problem Library (OPL) naming convention was adopted in the summer of 2012 to accommodate the increasing internationalization of WeBWorK and the possible inclusion of problem libraries from textbook publishers.

Click here to view the WeBWorK interface and sample questions (press "guest login") 
Interested in joining the pilot or attending our next workshop? Get in touch with VT's WeBWorK team at: webwork@vt.edu

OpenText Results
OpenText Results enables faculty to adopt an open textbook, integrate questions, and have students' responses ported directly into Canvas gradebook. "Results" may be integrated into any book hosted in Pressbooks. It uses H5P interactive elements to collect data, and Canvas LTI integration to deliver the "Results" to the Canvas gradebook. Browse the Pressbooks Directory here. How does it work? Review further documentation here.
Are you interested in this tool? Request a consultation: openeducation@vt.edu

Test bank development
The OEI has facilited events and multi-institutional processes with faculty from Pamplin College of Business and Virginia Tech's College of Engineering to develop problem sets and peer- and student-reviewed test items which complement open educational resources developed in those departments. These resources were developed collaboratively, using in-person testbank sprint methodology, remote collaborative approaches. or solo-authored by a current faculty member. These include test banks or test items for:

Fundamentals of Business (authentication required)
Strategic Management (authentication required) Strength of Materials (forthcoming)

And, hosting of faculty-authored open problem sets and solutions:
Aerospace Structures 
Electromagnetics, Vol 1 & 2

Funding for these projects was provided by 4VA, OEI Faculty grants, or VIVA Open Course grants. 
Interested in proposing a project? Request a consultation: openeducation@vt.edu

Engineering assessment environment
A small group from Engineering Education, Mechanical Engineering, and the University Libraries are actively developing new approaches to homework software for engineering. 
Want to get in touch? Request a consultation: openeducation@vt.edu

Please note: This is an extremely incomplete list of homework solutions.

Clinton-Lisell, V. & Kelly, A. E. (2024). The cost of doing homework: Online homework systems with access codes from a social justice perspective. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science (IJTES), 8(2), 296-310. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijtes.547

Collected literature on homework software. A public Zotero group curated by Amy Blau, Penrose Library at Whitman College.

Collected literature on WeBWorK. A public Zotero group. Curator unknown.