Computerized math homework; is it worth it?

As a graduation requirement, I had the privilege of designing a forty-hour experiential learning project. I decided the best setting for my growth as a future educator would be in the college's tutoring center. Below is a journal entry documenting what I learned from this valuable journey.

June 20th, 2018

I’ve been thinking lately, because of my work in the tutoring center about how the computerized homework systems affect how people learn math. My personal experience with them is limited, but in the tutoring center, most of the math assignments I end up helping people with are computerized. Initially I didn’t have any opinion on them, but slowly I’ve been deciding that they are not as effective as people hope they are. I have several qualms about them.

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Qualm 1: Computerized math homework feeds the misconception in math that what is most important is getting the right answer, not HOW you got it. This is so huge. With this mentality, we create learners that are simply fishing for the right answer, and paying almost no attention to how they got it, and why it was right. 

Qualm 2: The immediate feedback is sometimes not as helpful as we pretend it is. Because it is a computer, it doesn’t know that the incorrect answer is only .001 off from the correct answer because of a rounding mistake, and not from a fundamental misunderstanding of how to do the problem. It treats both of these kinds of incorrect answers as the same “amount of wrong”. Students can easily become disheartened by not being able to see a distinction between a rounding error and a fundamental misunderstanding error. Sometimes getting a wrong answer will cause them to think they’ve done the problem wrong even when they haven’t. Immediate computer feedback is overrated.

Qualm 3: Computerized homework doesn’t allow students to show work, or develop their own process of understanding. When computerized systems simulate showing work, it  discourages original thought on the part of the learner. Even that, though, is rare. Most of the time, students are not asked to show work, and therefore usually don’t do any. A lot of learning is being able to go back and see how you did a problem, and with computer systems, this element is almost removed completely.

Honestly, I could write a research paper about this, but since this is just a journal, I’ll leave it at that. Needless to say, I will not be assigning computerized homework to my future math students. I don’t think it’s helpful enough to make up for the incorrect kind of thinking it facilitates. There are other, better ways to cut down on grading as a teacher.