The Impact of Traditional- and Adaptive-Responsive Online Homework Systems on Student Performance in General Chemistry: Analyzing Extra Credit Participation

The positive impact of online homework has been clearly shown in previous literature. Online homework has become especially important in these times as online education grows. The recent development of the adaptive-responsive homework systems (such as Assessment of Learning in Knowledge Spaces--ALEKS) calls for a comparison of the effectiveness of this new type of system to the traditional-responsive systems (such as Sapling Learning). This study quantitatively compares extra credit scores and final exams and final points between two types of homework systems in a general chemistry course. Results indicate that extra credit completion using ALEKS (the adaptive-responsive system) has a higher correlation with homework performance, final exam performance, and final grade compared to extra credit completion using Sapling (the traditional-responsive system). This relationship difference could be due to a difference in the nature of how extra credit is earned within each system. Keywords: Online Homework, Extra Credit, Chemistry Education, Quantitative Research DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-6-02 Publication date: February 28th 202