 Hello and welcome to a screencast about web work which is the online homework system that the math department uses at Grand Valley State University. So hopefully your professor gave you a link to this or you can use the URL up here at the top either way. But on here maybe on their blackboard site they gave you a direct link to their class or maybe you just will go to this page. You can also just Google grant gvsu web work and I think this page pops up. But you'll notice on here that there are a lot of classes so you want to make sure that even if your professor gave you a direct link that you are actually logging into the correct section. I've seen many students come in with questions where they're saying oh it's not working it's not working well that's because they're in the wrong class. So you have a certain roster for each class just like on blackboard. Alright so we have 097 classes we have 110 classes you're going to pick all those. I'm going to pick the 110 master because that's the class I'm technically enrolled in even though I'm the instructor. Okay so now that I've picked my class and you could tell up here at the top it'll say math 110 master or math 110 section 5 or whatever you want for your particular class. It saved my username and password so I want to kind of mess with this a little bit. User names are case sensitive and you want to make sure to always use lower cases. So you notice if I use an uppercase F and I'm frobish by the way so Marcia frobish is my M frobish M is my login. If I use a capital F on here you notice it says invalid user ID or password. Okay so it wanted everything lower case and you use the exact same username and password that you use to get on all the computers at Grand Valley. You use to get on blackboard and lots of other places too so just make sure everything is lower case otherwise that can cause lots of problems. Alright so once we get into our class fingers crossed here we are. So once you actually get in yeah remember this is the instructor site so I have some features that you don't have and then I also have all the assignments that we've ever done for this class. So bear with me while I look at my whole big list here. But as you once you get a problem set assigned to you you can go in here at any point in time and go back and rework the problems. You can go back and finish the set if you just want to do like let's say you got started on problem one and then you had to leave your computer for some reason. You know you can come back and finish problem two it's not like it's going to it's not going to kick you out or anything. I mean you might have to log back in again. Another handy feature that some of my students have used is this download PDF option up here at the top. So some of them like to work on paper first and then they go back and put their answers in so that's a nice way to. You'll also notice here that it's got a due date and a due time so all of this this information is on every single homework set. So that's kind of a nice feature to look at. I'm here so it's got the name of the problem which I mean whatever that doesn't really matter the number of attempts that you've already done. Okay so I haven't worked on any of these yet so that's why they all say zero the remaining attempts I have so all of these problems have unlimited attempts. So let me go back to a different homework set and bear with me while I scroll down and find it exponential graphs. And I want problem oh you notice on here it already looks different on this main homework set page. It says unlimited for this problem this one only has one this one is one this one is two. So let's say you didn't notice that on this main problem you know this main problem page here in problem number four. You notice it also has a red part that says you only get one attempt at this problem. So the one biggest thing with web work that I have found is you actually need to read which sometimes is more difficult than others. Especially if you're excited to do the problem you know you might be just looking at the math not looking at any of the other details of it. So make sure you do read the details. This problem like I said headed up here in red and then other problems and this problem isn't a good one because it says this homework set is closed. But down here it will say how many attempts you have left. Okay so make sure you do pay attention to that kind of stuff. And this problem only has one option or one attempt because it's a multiple choice and there's only three choices. So we don't want you just guessing willy-nilly about stuff. Another interesting thing about web work so when you notice to how I'm going back and forth with all these things you can click on this math 110 master. Or over here you can also click on homework sets that'll take you back to that main page to let's see. So again bear with me while I find the problem here. I want 1.7 problem number five. Okay so again these all have all unlimited problem or unlimited attempts. So that's good. Problem five. And don't worry about the math at all here. I'm just trying to point out some pitfalls. So as you're reading and hopefully you're reading the question it says find a function blah blah blah if N is the number of copies made. And then you notice down here it uses function notation which maybe you know maybe you don't. But this variable in the parentheses is the variable you had better put in there. So let's make up some function. Doesn't really matter if it's correct or not. How about 2x minus 4. Okay just to give us a function. But what variable did I use? I used x. Okay so when I click on check answer. Web work gives me this crazy message. It says variable x is not defined in this context. Okay so instead of you thinking that well maybe you know this function is correct. Instead of you thinking web work is wrong. You have to make sure to interpret what it's telling you. So variable x is not defined means you need to use the variable that they gave us. Okay so now I'm going to change that to an N and it's lowercase N. You'll notice that lowercase in those parentheses. When I click on check now it still says I'm incorrect because obviously I just willy-nilly made up a function here. But you notice it doesn't have that goofy error message. Okay so at least I know I've got the right variable now. So now somehow my function is wrong. All the years I've been working with web work. Web work is very rarely wrong. Okay so there's something you are putting in incorrect that's causing issues. So you know bear with it. Okay another issue that I see and again this is a reading thing. And I'm going to go back here. Is decimal places. Oh boy that's always a fun one. So again bear with me while I find the next section I want. Exponential modeling here we go. So I want problem number three unlimited attempts. That's good because this one's going to take us a few. All right so find a function that best fits. Again don't worry about the math here. But it says use exact values or decimals correct to four places. Okay now when you're actually doing this problem I mean it's got an infinite number of decimals. But let's pretend like we didn't read that. Okay and let's say I start typing in my function. Oh but it remembers my previous answers. So let's say I type it in like that. So this is my base that goes on forever. And that's actually you know we'll see what happens. We click on show correct answers. Oh wrong. Okay let me go back to my calculator or graphing device here. And okay I see now there's a four. Oh okay let's see if this one works any better. Trying to be a little bit more accurate. Oh but I only use two decimals it wants four. Okay so let me try another one. Let's stick an eight in there. Check answers. Okay so even though those answers aren't super far off. You know okay well it depends on what kind of off you're talking about. But 1.1 versus 1.14 versus 1.148. You know yeah they're really not that far off. But Web work wants four decimal places so you better give it that. Using the same problem. And up here you notice that Web work changed my parentheses to a time sign. And then it moved that X inside. Okay totally does not matter sometimes about parentheses. Other times though it matters a lot. So let's go back to the same problem. And again don't worry about how I'm putting stuff in. But let's say I'm putting my problem like this. Okay and again you may or may not know if this is correct. But I want it to be negative four out here front for my coefficient. I want four to be my base. And I want my exponent to be X over ten. Okay when I click on check solutions. Oh and you notice here it gives you a nice little preview. So make sure you actually look at that too. It's got the X in the exponent but the ten somehow is in the denominator of the whole function. I only wanted it in the denominator of the exponent. Okay so I got to go back in and fix these parentheses. So now if I do that. And don't hit enter or return by the way it just frustrates you. Go down click select or correct. And bam we're good. So parentheses are a lot like the calculator or any other graphing device you might have used. You need to make sure to tell it what to do very specifically. Okay web work will always follow order of operations. So if you don't tell it to put something in a different place it will do the correct order of operations. Alright one more error that I see a lot. And again let me find the right one. Here we are. Look at all these problems we have ready for you guys. It's not exciting. Alright exponential modeling problem number one. Oh and did you guys notice here it says you only have two attempts. Okay got to pay attention. Although here it says only one attempt but whatever close enough we don't have very many. Okay again don't worry about the math but let's say the answer for this problem was 1,120. Okay that looks like a perfectly legitimate answer to me. When I click select check or try that again. When I click on check answer there we go. You notice over here we have another message. Okay your answer isn't a number. What? It looks like a list of numbers. So whenever web work sees commas it understands them as a list. So it's thinking you're telling it there's one and then you're also telling it there's 120 atoms present. Okay well obviously that can't happen but whatever. So whenever you put a list it's expecting or it's thinking that's two answers not one. So you'll notice if I get rid of the comma and just write it as a number without any commas. Bam it's correct and it likes it. Okay so web work can be frustrating from time to time especially if you know you're putting in the right answer you think you're putting in the right answer and somehow a parentheses off or you put a comma or some other issues are on there. So no down here at the bottom you can click on this email instructor button. Okay and instead of sending an email from your email it will send it directly from web work. So that way on our end as a professor we can go in and actually see exactly the problem you were doing and what you've tried and everything else. Leave incorrect answers in there. Okay so that way we can know what you've been trying. And then when you click on this it even lets you put a little email in here. Write down what you tried. You know say I did x, y, and z and then maybe your professor realizes oh you know your x step was incorrect and you need to fix it this way. So that way they get an idea of how you got your answer to the problem. Okay so that's a huge huge help to us and then it'll also be a big help to you. So hopefully you don't need it very often but in case you do it's there. Alright good luck.