WeBWorK is an online assessment platform that integrates with Canvas and is used primarily in mathematics and science. Students can access practice problems and assignments anywhere, and instructors can limit the number of attempts for each problem. By completing problems at their own pace and receiving instant feedback each time, students are empowered to practice and understand new concepts and learning goals.
WeBWorK runs in your web browser and supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge. It is recommended that you use one of the two latest versions of Chrome or Firefox.
Some key features are:
- Display of complex mathematical notations and formulas (LaTeX)
- Automatic grading to provide students with instant feedback
- Randomly generated numbers and functions within problems to prevent students from sharing answers
- Instructors can author their own problems or choose from thousands of problems in the National Problem Library
- Students can access the Math Entry Assistance tool to easily input mathematical formulas into the answer field
There are 3 main assignment types in WeBWorK:
- Homework Sets are untimed problem sets used for homework. Instructors select Opens and Closes dates for each homework set, as well as an Answers Available date to reveal the correct answers to students. Instructors may also choose to Hide Hints from Students while they work on the homework problems. Lastly, homework sets can be made Visible/not Visible, which is a useful feature to hide homework sets from students' view during exams.
- Gateway/Quizzes are timed assessments used for quizzes and exams. Their options include the same as homework sets, plus additional exam-related settings: instructors can set a specific Test Time Limit instead of letting the assignment expire at the Close date, and they may choose the Number of Tests per Time Interval to set the number of attempts each student will have during the exam. To help deter cheating, instructors can choose to Order Problems Randomly as well as choose not to Show Scores on Finished Assignments.
- Proctored Gateway/Quizzes are password-protected Gateway/Quizzes. Students must enter credentials, which are provided by the instructor, to access the exam. The default setting requires credentials only once: the first time the student accesses the exam. If you instead want your WeBWorK course to require credentials every time students access their exam and upon submitting their exam, please refer to the page below:
Instructors will need to create their WeBWorK course from within Canvas at the start of each term, using the process described below.
- Log into Canvas.
- Click Assignments.
- Click + Assignment.
- Enter an Assignment Name such as "WeBWorK Link".
- Scroll down to Submission Type.
- Select External Tool from the drop-down menu.
- Next to Enter or find an External Tool URL, click Find.
- Note: If you skip this step and manually enter a URL without using the Find function, WeBWorK will not sync with Canvas.
- Find and select WeBWorK, and click Select.
- Select Load This Tool In a New Tab.
- Note: If you skip this step then WeBWorK will not sync correctly with Canvas.
- Click Save and Publish.
- Click on Load [Assignment Name] in a new window.
Once a general link has been created in Canvas, instructors and students will be able to access WeBWorK via this link. In order for your Canvas class list to be synced with your WeBWorK course, your students would need to click on the WeBWorK link in your Canvas course themselves. You can also choose to manually sync your class list through the Classlist Editor on WeBWorK. Please see this page for more information on the classlist sync.
Note: The course navigation WeBWorK link in Canvas can provide students with an entry point to the WeBWorK course site, but will not automatically sync the WeBWorK assignment grades to the Canvas grade book. To sync WeBWorK grades with Canvas, please see Setting Up Canvas Grade Sync.
In Canvas, it is possible to sync the grades of WeBWorK assignments with Canvas’s gradebook. This functionality is not automatic and requires the creation of individual assignment links in Canvas for each specific WeBWorK assignment rather than using a general WeBWorK link. To set up individual Canvas assignments for WeBWorK-Canvas grade sync, follow the instructions below.
Note: if you already have an assignment in your WeBWorK course that you would like to set up Grade Sync for, you may skip the instructions, "How to create a problem set in WeBWorK".
- How to create a problem set in WeBWorK
- How to create individual WeBWorK assignment links in Canvas
- Important information about Canvas Grade Sync
You can also do a manual grade sync by going to the Hmwk Sets Editor, go to the LTI tab and click Take Action!
For more information and in-depth instruction guides about working with WeBWorK, please visit our full WeBWorK documentation on our UBC wiki page:
- You can follow the instructions in this guide here to copy WeBWorK assignments from a previously-offered course: How to reuse individual assignments from term-to-term.
If the WeBWorK assignments you would like to copy over include customized problems, you can follow the instructions here instead: How to reuse assignments with customized problems.
- The automatic grade sync between WeBWorK and Canvas occurs every 8 hours. If the grades in Canvas have not been updated, it is most likely to get updated in the next automatic grade sync (up to 8 hours later). You can also manually sync the grades through the Hmwk Set Editor. You can refer to this page for more information on Canvas grade syncing.
- You can follow the instructions here on how to export your WeBWorK assignment grades: How to download grades and upload them to Canvas.
- Yes, you can. However, we do not recommend this. Launching WeBWorK from the Canvas mobile app may cause some issues in loading the WeBWorK portal. Using Safari on your tablet/mobile devices may also cause some loading errors.
- Yes, you can track a student’s progress in WeBWork. You can click on Student Progress on the left navigation menu and click into the desired information you’d like to check upon.
- Yes, you can, however, you would need to contact the LT Hub so that they can enable your ability to submit on a student’s behalf. You can contact LT Hub here to enable this feature, and it needs to be requested on a course-by-course basis. For more information on this, you can refer to this wiki documentation here.
- If you would like to extend a particular WeBWorK assignment for your student, you can refer to this guide here: How to extend individual WeBWorK homework sets.
If you are using WeBWorK for your exams, you can refer to the guides below on how to provide students with accommodation:
- This may have happened because you have modified the graph without adding an additional line of code that allows WeBWorK to refresh the image. You can refer to the instructions in this page on how to add the code.
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If you are looking to change which particular email addresses would receive this email when a student clicks 'Email WeBWorK TA', you can manage this by going to :
"Instructor Tools" > "Course Configuration" > "E-mail" > "E-mail feedback from students automatically sent to this permission level and higher:" > Change to "Nobody" > Change "Additional addresses for receiving feedback e-mail"
If you are looking to outright remove the 'Email WeBWorK TA' button, you can change the setting in:
"Instructor Tools" > "Course Configuration" > "Permissions" > "Can e-mail instructor" > Change to "Nobody".
