Automated Homework Grading for Large General Chemistry Classes Many general chemistry students are still in their formative years and benefit greatly from a structured program of routine work. We have found the following procedure workable for classes approaching300students. IIomework assignments are made weekly from the textbook, hut the problems are broken into a number of steps. The student,^ are asked to answer the problems according to the steps listed in an instruction sheet. The students turn in their answers in scientific notation on a standard answer sheet. Their answers are then transferred to IBM cards by one of our department secretaries, who is an excellent keypunch operator. The homework is then graded using a student-written Fortran IV progrsm which compares the students' answers with the correct answers. The printout gives a listing for each student, indicating whether his answer is correct or not, and if his answer is incorrect the correct answer is printed. The student's answer sheet with the printout appended to it is returned to the student. The printout also lists each student'sperformance audgives astatistical analysis, which we keep for our records. Using this approach the student can be lead through a problem which he might not otherwise be able to solve, and if he makes a mistake he can find where i t was. I t also rtllows us to give a fair amount of homework without burdening the faculty or teaching assistants. Typically, the time per assignment involved is 6-8 hr keypunching and 2-4 hr sortingand stapling. The computer time on an IBM 360 Model 50is about 2 min. Our program can he used for m y type of question for which the answer can be written in scientific notation. Using Dickerson, Gray, and Haight's "Chemical Principles" we have compiled stepwise instructions far solving most of the odd-numbered problems in the first half of the text. A listing of our program and a set of stepwise instructions are available on request. We would like to thank Mr. James Edwards for writing and testing the program and Mrs. Kathy Tepesch for her yeoman work as a keypunch operator.
JOHN W. CONNOLLY UNIVERSITY OF MISSOU~I-KAN~.LS C~TY CITY, MI~SOURI 64110 KANSAS
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Journol of Chemical Education
