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A new integrated computer-assisted personalized assignment (CAPA) system that creates individual assignments for each student has been developed and found to be a powerful motivator. The CAPA system allows students to enter their answers to personalized assignments directly via networked terminals, gives immediate feedback and hints (allowing challenging questions), while providing the instructor with on-line performance information. The students are encouraged to study together which is known to be an effective learning strategy, but each must still obtain his/her own correct answers. Students are allowed to re-enter solutions to the problems before the due date without penalty, thus providing students with different skills levels the opportunity and incentive to understand the material without being judged during the learning process. The features and operation of the system are described, observations on its use in an introductory general physics class are reported, and some of the highly favorable student reactions are included.
Kashy et al. (Wed,) studied this question.