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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION
Comparison of the Effectiveness of Online
Homework With Handwritten Homework in
Electrical and Computer Engineering Classes
H. Joel Trussell , Life Fellow, IEEE, and Marcia L. Gumpertz
Abstract—Contribution: This article compares the predictive
performance of the scores on WeBWorK homework (online)
with those of standard handwritten homework. The compar-
ison is done across six undergraduate electrical engineering
classes where each of the nine instructors have used both
homework modalities.
Background: Online homework systems have been used for
many years, but analysis of their effectiveness is mixed. Previous
work has been limited to a small number of classes in a wide
variety of disciplines. This article has a larger number of classes
and instructors than previous studies. The classes cover many
basic topic areas in electrical and computer engineering, so is
directly applicable to the audience of these transactions.
Research Question: What is the effect of online homework com-
pared to traditional handwritten homework on the performance
of the students on the final exams in selected ECE classes?
Methodology: Mixed-effects analysis of variance models are
used to determine the predictive ability of performance on home-
work of the two modalities on the performance on the final exams.
The data are limited to classes where the instructors have taught
the class using both modalities. These models incorporate the
effect of modalities for each instructor and the effect of the
modalities across all classes.
Findings: The result is that there is no significant statis-
tical difference in the two modalities to predict final exam
scores. This indicates that the advantages of using the automated
online system can be obtained with no detrimental effect on the
students’ learning.
Index Terms—Effectiveness, handwritten homework,
online homework, statistical analysis, traditional homework,
WeBWorK.
I. I NTRODUCTION
HE USE of online systems for student homework and
T testing is becoming more common with the improve-
ments in software and its availability. There are still many
questions about the effectiveness and advantages of its use
compared to the traditional handwritten submissions. This arti-
cle will examine the effectiveness of using the WeBWorK
online system for homework in several classes in Electrical
Manuscript received September 3, 2019; revised December 15, 2019;
accepted January 18, 2020. (H. Joel Trussell and Marcia L. Gumpertz
contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding author: H. Joel Trussell.)
H. Joel Trussell is with the ECE Department, NC State University, Raleigh,
NC 27695 USA (e-mail: hjt@ncsu.edu).
Marcia L. Gumpertz is with the Statistics Department, NC State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695 USA (e-mail: gumpertz@ncsu.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2020.2971198
0018-9359 
c 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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1
and Computer Engineering (ECE) at NC State University.
Effectiveness will be measured by the performance of the
students on the final exams. The classes analyzed range
from sophomore to senior-level undergraduate classes. The
classes selected used traditional homework in the past and
changed to the online system more recently. The same instruc-
tors taught the classes using the same textbooks and syllabi
for both modalities.
There are several aspects that may be considered when com-
paring homework modalities, including effectiveness, student
preference, faculty preference, efficiency, and cost. It is noted
that other aspects of education may also be considered and the
definition of effectiveness may vary from that used here.
The results of any study of online homework may depend
on the subject areas and the software. The WeBWorK
system [1] was designed by mathematicians for undergrad-
uate math classes. It has been used in classes in disci-
plines that have a large math component, e.g., physics,
chemistry, statistics, computer science, and various engineer-
ing disciplines [2]–[7]. There are other online systems that
are used in these disciplines but a comparison of those is
beyond the scope of this article. It is also true that a soft-
ware system may be appropriate for some topics within
a discipline and not for others. For example, WeBWorK
is quite useful for classes that introduce and analyze cir-
cuits but is not appropriate for the design of circuits. The
classes in which it is used in the NCSU ECE Department
include: 1) math for ECE (ECE220); 2) electromagnetics
(ECE303); 3) electromechanical energy conversion (ECE305);
4) control systems (ECE308); 5) electrical engineering for
non-ECE engineering majors (ECE331); 6) digital signal
processing (ECE421); 7) random processes (ECE514); 8)
power system analysis (ECE451); and 9) electric motor drives
(ECE453).
The properties of the WeBWorK system that are required
for effective usage are as follows.
1) Allow input and check of math formulas with multiple
independent variables in a syntax-free format.
2) Allow parameter randomization of problem variables,
so the students obtain unique problems; the random-
ization of the parameters for the problems means that
the problems can be used in successive offerings of the
class without the worry of the answers being available
from previous semesters. (Note that this also reduces the
likelihood of cheating.)
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION
3) Allow dynamic graphs, e.g., signal input and output
can be drawn for the random parameters of a specific
problem.
4) Allow interactive graphics, e.g., students can create
graphs and vector diagrams.
These properties allow the creation of online problems that
reflect realistic engineering problems. In fact, the problems
created in WeBWorK at NCSU are closely related to prob-
lems in the texts that are used for the classes. This avoids
a common problem of matching online library problems to the
text used in the class. In the cases where the instructors have
their own problems, custom problems were created for the
instructors.
The ECE department at NCSU supported the adoption
of WeBWorK by funding teaching assistants (TAs) to work
with one of the authors to develop the problems for vari-
ous classes. This extended the work done for his own course
to others that were mathematically based. The relief of the
programming burden made the adoption process much more
palatable for instructors who did not have the time to invest
in learning the WeBWork system. The instructors had only to
indicate the problems that they wished to have coded from
past semesters of their courses. It was possible to adapt the
original problems to WeBWorK format in the vast majority
of cases. Instructors could augment the online problems with
handwritten problems if desired, but this was done rarely.
The development of the problems for a semester was done
for each class using the time of the author plus the time
of a half-time (20 h per week) TA. For the original class
of the author, his time was probably about 15 h per week.
This included the time required to learn the details of the
WeBWorK system.
WeBWorK was chosen over other systems because it was
easy to program the problems of interest for ECE classes and
it was free to faculty and students. This is mentioned in [5],
which discusses the application to signal processing. The
WebAssign system was also available at NCSU. It seemed to
require more effort in programming and had a significant cost
passed along to the students. In talking with the representa-
tives from WebAssign, they indicate that their system provides
much the same capabilities mentioned in the list above.
Other aspects of WeBWorK that are similar to other systems
and very useful include the following.
1) Problems are easily grouped into problem sets, which
basically define individual homework assignments. It
is easy to rearrange problems into updated sets as
schedules change.
2) Problems allow multiple attempts for the students to get
credit. In WeBWorK, the problems are submitted indi-
vidually, not as a group in the whole assignment. The
deadline for the homework set applies to all problems in
that set. The number of attempts per problem is deter-
mined by the instructor and depends on the difficulty and
complexity of the problem. One instructor has recently
allowed unlimited attempts for most problems. These
data have not been analyzed yet.
3) WeBWorK allows the student an easy way to ask ques-
tions and gives the instructor or TAs information about
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the student’s answer. There is a button to “Email the
Instructor.” This allows the students to ask their ques-
tions and the email to the instructor includes a link to
the problems with the students’ answers. Very often,
the instructor can identify the error from the answer.
Occasionally, the instructor may require more detailed
information about the student’s approach, which would
be sent the old fashioned way of emailing the scanned
work. From the NCSU experience, the vast majority
of questions are answered with the information in the
“Email the Instructor” notice.
4) Problems allow hints based on incorrect student answers.
5) WeBWorK collects information that can be used to eval-
uate problems. Various statistics are computed to help
evaluate problems and students, e.g., the average number
of attempts required for a given percentage of students
solving a problem, a percentile score of correct answers
for each problem. The detailed data can be downloaded
and processed by offline software, such as Excel, for
more detailed studies. For example, a detailed study of
the number of attempts for each problem could be used
to study the correlation between attempts and overall
performance in the course.
II. P REVIOUS W ORK ON O NLINE H OMEWORK
E FFECTIVENESS
The work of [8] gives a good survey of benefits and per-
ceived problems of using online homework. While this article
emphasizes its use in accounting classes, the authors mention
the results from other disciplines. This is good since there are
not a lot of papers that address the effectiveness of online
homework. The authors say, “The literature on whether OHS
[online homework systems] improves student performance is
mixed.” They cite some papers that show limited effectiveness
and others that have found little or no improvement. Rather
than repeat [8]’s references, this article adds more recent
work. Bowman et al. [7] and Buttner and Black [9] found
that online homework helped and Chow [10], Dodson [11],
Babaali and Gonzalez [12], Woolley [13], and Callahan [14]
found no significant differences between online and traditional
homework.
There were two papers that indicated limited negative
effects. The work of [15] found that students using online
homework performed better on solving quantitative prob-
lems, but performed more poorly on multiple-choice questions.
A related finding in [16] finds that on tests that are primar-
ily multiple choice, students who are allowed two attempts
to solve problems perform more poorly on tests than those
that are allowed only one attempt. This negative effect was
on multiple-choice problems, which are used rarely in ECE
problems developed at NCSU. Those problems predominantly
have answers that are numerical, formulas, or systems of equa-
tions. Because the problems call for writing numbers and
formulas, instructors give students several attempts to get the
correct answer for each problem. The relation of the number
of attempts and performance on testing is beyond the scope
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TRUSSELL AND GUMPERTZ: COMPARISON OF EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE HOMEWORK WITH HANDWRITTEN HOMEWORK IN ECE CLASSES
of this article. However, preliminary work at NCSU has indi-
cated no significant statistical correlation between the number
of attempts a student makes and their performance on tests.
The lack of proof that online homework improves stu-
dent performance is often noted as a reason that many
instructors do not use it in their classes. Most of the refer-
ences that found no statistically significant effect on student
performance, still indicated that the advantages of the online
homework make it preferable to traditional handwritten home-
work.
While there is no substantial evidence that online home-
work improves performance, there are only limited results
in the literature that indicate that it is harmful. Indeed, the
results discussed here indicate there is no statistically sig-
nificant difference between traditional handwritten homework
and online homework on the students’ performances on final
exams. Humphrey and Beard [8] and Chow [10] noted many
of the benefits of the online homework systems. These are
elaborated here. WeBWorK provides the following benefits.
1) Instant Feedback to the Students: Usually, the student
can correct her work if told there is an error.
2) Greater Access to Help: WeBWorK allows the student
to e-mail the instructor and teaching assistants a ques-
tion about a problem. The e-mail contains a link that
allows the recipient to see the exact problem and its
solution. The student does not have to wait until the
next scheduled office hours to get help. Note: The
number of e-mailed questions in the classes is usually
small, e.g., the average is less than 5 per homework
assignment.
3) Grading is instantaneous and thus requires greatly
reduced instructor or TA grading time. This time
can be used for more productive development of the
class.
4) Analysis of the Class Results is Easy: WeBWork pro-
duces a large database of statistics that can help evaluate
the students and the homework problems. For example,
it is easy to see which problems are the most difficult.
Other data, such as recorded incorrect answers when
multiple attempts are permitted, can be used to indi-
cate guessing; timing of the submissions can be used to
indicate study habits.
An additional advantage of the WeBWorK software is that
the problems can be reused by the students after grading. There
is a button that allows the student to “get another version of
this problem.” The student can see the correct answers to such
problems, since they are no longer in graded status. Since stu-
dents often ask for additional examples of problems on which
to practice, this is a benefit to them.
Trussell and Baron [5], Humphrey and Beard [8],
Woolley [13], and Zerr [17] noted that generally students like
the online homework systems. The evaluations at the end of the
semester for the classes of interest indicate similar results. The
general evaluation question on the standard NCSU evaluation
form asks for a rating from 1 to 5 of the statement, “the course
assignments were valuable aids to learning.” The average for
classes with Webwork was 4.2, the same as handwritten home-
work. In a couple of classes that added the specific question on
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3
WeBWorK, “online homework (WeBWork) with instant feed-
back was helpful for learning.” This statement was rated higher
than the general question, even though all the assignments
were WeBWorK, (3.5/4.1 and 4.2/4.3). The NCSU experi-
ence also agrees with other authors that students who have
taken classes with online homework will sometimes request
WeBWorK in classes that do not offer it.
The bottom line is that even if online homework does not
significantly improve student performance, it has many other
benefits that make it desirable.
III. D ESIGN OF ECE S TUDY
Online homework was introduced in the ECE department
at NCSU in 2013 in ECE220, analytical methods in Electrical
and Computer Engineering. The instructor for that class had
taught the class several times before using traditional home-
work. He developed online problems that were keyed to the
problems in the text for the class. All successive instructors
have opted to use the online system.
The online system was offered to other ECE classes that
appeared to be appropriate candidates. The authors worked
with the instructors who taught the classes to create the
problems that resembled those they were currently using.
Some instructors used problems directly related to those in
the text they were using; others had their own versions of
problems for their class. It was relatively easy to accommo-
date both.
Since the instructors that used the online system had taught
the same class previously, the results from the previous
semesters were used to compare the effectiveness of the online
system. There were no cases where instructors tried the online
system and reverted to traditional homework. This is likely
because they were instrumental in creating the online problems
for their class.
A table of the classes for those that use both online and tra-
ditional homework and their related data is given in Table I.
Three examples of WeBWork problems for ECE220 and
ECE303 are shown in Figs. 1–3. An online demonstration of
the WeBWork problems created for ECE classes is available
at [18].
IV. DATA A NALYSIS AND R ESULTS
There are two aspects of the analysis that are of interest.
The first is the simple relationship between the students’
performance on the final exam and the modality of the home-
work used in the class. The second is the effect of homework
style on the relationship between performance on the home-
work and performance on the final exam, while explicitly
considering the natural variation of the populations of the
classes from semester to semester. SAS Proc Mixed was used
to fit both models of Sections IV-A and IV-B.
A. Relation of Final Exam Scores and Modality
First, the effect of the WeBWorK modality on the final exam
score outcome is discussed. To test whether the mean final
exam scores were different between sections using WeBWork
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

TABLE I
ECE C LASS I NFORMATION , H—H ANDWRITTEN , W—W E BW OR K. B ECAUSE THE N UMBER OF P ROBLEMS VARIES S LIGHTLY F ROM S EMESTER TO
S EMESTER , THE N UMBER OF S ETS AND P ROBLEMS R EFLECT THE M OST R ECENT O FFERING . T HE T OTAL N UMBER OF S TUDENTS
R EFLECTS T HOSE IN A LL S EMESTERS ECE C LASSES

Fig. 1. Example problem ECE220, differential equation, and blank answers.

Fig. 3. Example problem ECE303, electromagnetics, and preview and

answers shown.

Fig. 2. Example problem ECE303, electromagnetics, and answers inserted.

allows for variation among classes, (mc)ij represents a ran-

and sections using paper homework, the following mixed,
effects analysis of the variance model is used to fit the data:
yijkl = μ + Mi + cj + (mc)ij + sk(ij) + ijkl .
In this model, (1), yijkl is the final exam score for the lth stu-
dent in the kth section of the jth class using the ith modality
(handwritten homework or WeBWorK). Note that for the sta-
tistical analysis, a “class” refers to a particular instructor
teaching a particular course. The μ term represents the mean
final exam score, Mi represents the effect of the modality, cj
dom interaction between the modality effect and the class,
sk(ij) allows for random variation among semesters of the same
(1) class, and ijkl allows for variation among individuals within
the same section of the class.
The estimated means and standard errors for the final exam
scores are:
1) mean of final exams for online mode = 76.35 and std
error = 2.69;
2) mean of final exams for handwritten mode = 75.33 and
std error = 2.68.

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TRUSSELL AND GUMPERTZ: COMPARISON OF EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE HOMEWORK WITH HANDWRITTEN HOMEWORK IN ECE CLASSES 5

Fig. 4. Box plots of distribution of homework averages in each section of each course, sorted in order of increasing median homework score for each course.
WeBWorK denoted (+), traditional homework (o).

There is no significant difference between the two modali-
ties (p-value = 0.3964).
As a point of interest, there is not a significant differ-
ence in mean homework scores between the two modalities
(p-value = 0.34). The estimated means and standard errors
for the homework scores are:
1) mean of the homework averages for online
mode = 86.64 and std error = 2.34;
2) mean of the homework averages for handwritten
mode = 85.31 and std error = 2.34.
B. Relation of Final Exam Scores to Homework Performance
Next, the relationship between homework and final exam
scores is discussed. Does one modality exhibit a stronger rela-
tionship with the final exam score than the other? All classes
but one had graded homework and a final exam. The exception
was ECE308, which substituted a project for the final exam
score. For ECE308, the average of the two in-class exams was
used in place of the final for the analysis.
The classes varied in several respects from each other. Even
sections of the same course, e.g., ECE331, which is taught
by several instructors, have different numbers of homework
assignments and different numbers of exams. The numbers
of homework sets and problems listed in Table I reflect the
latest offerings. For this analysis, this article uses the aver-
age homework grade and the final exam grade, both of which
were normalized to a 100-point scale. The final class grades
could not be used since they differed by weightings of different
amounts for different assignments in the classes.
For most sections, the homework averages tended to be highly
skewed toward the upper end of the 100-point scale (Fig. 4).
In Fig. 4, the boxes enclose 75% of the homework scores in
each section. In most cases, the boxes lie above 80% and in
some, the entire box is between 90% and 100%. Unusually
low homework averages for individual students are denoted
by asterisks. The median, denoted by a bar in the figures, is
higher than the mean, denoted by a plus or circle, in every
section but one. There is no obvious consistent difference in the
distribution of homework scores for sections using WeBWorK
(+) compared to sections using traditional homework (o).
The results of a simple linear regression of final exam score
on homework average for each section of each class are shown
in Fig. 5. There is wide variability in the slopes and intercepts
among sections, even within the same course and modality.
No consistent differences in slope or intercept between sec-
tions with WeBWork or paper homework are apparent. In
most sections, there was a significant correlation between aver-
age homework score and final exam grade, but in seven of
the 40 sections, there was not. Of the seven, three instruc-
tors had nonsignificant correlation in both handwritten and
online homework. While this might be caused by the instruc-
tors’ testing styles, it does not indicate any difference in the
performance caused by the modalities.
The fitted regression lines are displayed by the instructor
in Fig. 6. Again, there is wide variability among sections
taught by the same instructor, though instructors 1 and 5 look
more consistent than the others. Instructors 7 and 9 each
had one semester, their first semester teaching the course,

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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

Fig. 5. Regression for each section of each course. The fitted lines are displayed separately for each course.

Fig. 6. Regression of final exam score on homework average for each section. Regression lines are displayed separately for each instructor.

where the relationship between homework scores and final slope in Figs. 5 and 6. For one instructor (instructor 6),
exam scores was different from later semesters. The extremely the slopes for WeBWorK look steeper than for traditional
small range of homework scores results in the only negative homework, but for the others, there is no obvious consistent

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TRUSSELL AND GUMPERTZ: COMPARISON OF EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE HOMEWORK WITH HANDWRITTEN HOMEWORK IN ECE CLASSES
difference between WeBWork and paper homework. Formal
tests comparing WeBWorK and homework with respect to the
relationship between homework scores and final exam scores
are provided using data that produced Fig. 6.
A random coefficient regression model was used to test the
relationship between homework score and final exam score.
The model regressed final exam score on homework score,
with separate intercepts and slopes for each modality. The
model also allowed the intercepts and slopes to vary randomly
among classes and sections within a class. The model is
yijkl = μ + Mi + β1 xijkl + Mβ1i xijkl
+ mk(ij) + bk(ij) xijkl + ijkl .
In (2), yijkl is the final exam score and xijkl is the home-
work score for an individual student. The parameters Mi , β1 ,
and Mβ1i represent the modality effect, the slope for home-
work scores, and the modality by homework score interaction,
respectively. The random coefficients mk(ij) and bk(ij) allow
the coefficients to vary randomly among classes and sections
of a class, and ijkl accounts for variation among individual
students in the same section of a class.
The results of interest in combining all sections and classes
are:
1) the estimated slope for the online mode = 0.3983 and std
error = 0.026, the estimated slope for the handwritten
mode = 0.3544 and std error = 0.027, and p-value for
the test of equal slopes = 0.2478;
2) the estimated intercept for the online mode = 42.86 and
std error = 2.66, the estimated intercept for the hand-
written mode = 44.78 and std error = 2.83, and p-value
for the test of equal intercepts = 0.6251.
From this, one can see that there is no statistically signifi-
cant difference between the two homework modalities in the
relationship between homework scores and final exam scores.
Note that because the exam scores and homework aver-
ages are capped at 100%, some of the usual assumptions of
the mixed-effects model (2) are not satisfied. This can be
addressed by regressing the logit or log odds of the exam
scores on the logit of the homework averages rather than
regressing the original exam scores on the homework aver-
ages. If this is done, neither the test for equality of slopes nor
the test for equality of intercepts shows a significant difference
due to modality (p-value = 0.76 for the test for equal slopes
and p-value = 0.59 for the test for equal intercepts).
V. C ONCLUSION
Based on the results from 40 sections of six different ECE
courses taught by nine different instructors from 2011 to 2018,
there was no significant difference between the performance of
students that took classes using the online homework modal-
ity and those that took classes using traditional handwritten
homework from the same instructor. It was noted that online
homework has several advantages for students, such as imme-
diate feedback, timely assistance on questions, and availability
of practice problems. The online homework has the obvious
benefits for instructors of time savings on grading, uniform
grading of problems, reduction of the likelihood of cheating,
and recording data for easy analysis of problem difficulty and
effectiveness. Since there are no disadvantages for the students,
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7
and the student evaluations of the online modality are posi-
tive, readers are encouraged to use online homework where it
is applicable.
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H. Joel Trussell (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in electri-
cal engineering and computer science from the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM, USA, in 1976.
He is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering with
NC State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. He has a long research history in
signal and image processing and a shorter history in education.
Marcia L. Gumpertz received the Ph.D. degree in statistics from North
Carolina State University (NC State), Raleigh, NC, USA, in 1989.
She is currently a Professor of statistics with the Department of Statistics,
North Carolina State University. She has coauthored the book Planning,
Construction and Statistical Analysis of Comparative Experiments. She is
a PI of the AGEP-North Carolina Alliance: An Institutional Transformation
Model to Increase Minority STEM Doctoral Student and Faculty Success.
Prof. Gumpertz is a member of the Statistical Consulting Core providing
statistical consulting services to the NC State community. She is a fellow of
the American Statistical Association.