Expert TA Blog

We think all instructors can agree—they went into education for the love of learning. The administrative tasks that accompany being an instructor are simply part of the job, an often cumbersome and time-consuming part.

We understand your time is limited, and have worked to ensure that getting started with the Expert TA online homework system is quick and easy. Here are the next steps for instructors interested in using Expert TA:

Let us show you around

We are grateful for the opportunity to introduce you to Expert TA. You have the ability to access our interactive demo online anytime, or for a deeper look, contact us to setup a live demonstration.

Getting setup

If you’re ready to partner with Expert TA, contact us directly, and we’ll get your account established right away. Be sure to provide us with your class name and any other details that may help with the personalization of your setup (section numbers, textbook, semester start date, etc…)

From there, we’ll setup your class or classes, and automatically generate the class registration information students will need to join. We provide a simple, step-by-step guide for students that walks them through the registration process.

While Expert TA was designed to be intuitive, a personalized orientation meeting can be scheduled to demonstrate the full suite of class management tools.

With you (and each student) every step of the way

A receptionist service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist with basic inquiries, such as a forgotten password or payment inquiry for students.  More complex questions are always instantly sent to our in-house support team, who can also be reached directly at main@theexpertta.com. Our average response time to questions—regardless of day or time sent—is less than 30 minutes.

Each instructor also has an account manager, a dedicated Expert TA pro, who’s available by phone or email directly to address questions and share best practices.

Payment

In our standard pricing model, students pay $32.50 for single-semester access to Expert TA, and no student will pay more than $65.00 for a two-semester sequence, regardless of drops or retakes. Please see our Product page for more information about pricing and materials.

Hints and feedback are often used interchangeably in the world of online homework systems. However, while they both hold an important place in student learning, they are not synonyms. Too many companies suggest their systems offer feedback when they truly mean hints: static suggestions based on the question and not on an individual student’s answer.

What is the difference between hints and feedback, and which is more effective for students?  First, let’s define the terms. A hint is a slight or indirect indication or suggestion. Educationally, hints are not meant to give students pinpointed help, but offer generalized, pre-programmed instructional advice. When a student is staring at a blank sheet of paper, not sure where to begin, hints are the right tool to lead them down a good path.

By contrast, feedback is defined as information given specifically based on a person’s performance, usually offered as a basis for improvement or better understanding. This means feedback within a homework system should always consider a student’s incorrect answer and respond accordingly.  Feedback helps a student course-correct after having veered off track. Both hints and feedback have learning value,  and each have their place helping students achieve a successful outcome.

Expert TA is one of few companies with the technology to offer both hints and feedback, and our human-like feedback is the product of analyzing five years’ worth of student data across hundreds of schools. By looking at incorrect answers and mining the data for which portions students commonly got wrong, we were able to isolate specific parts of each problem, then tailor feedback to address appropriate misconceptions. We then ask our staff of instructors to help us create guided, Socratic feedback from this data.  We want the feedback to be shown in a similar way to how an instructor might explain a wrong answer to a student during office hours if they were working the problem together. (Read more about our data-mining process here and then dive into one of our Expert TA Analytics case studies.)

Let’s look at some examples of hints and feedback in Expert TA. For context, instructors using Expert TA have access to thousands of comprehensive introductory physics problems. All of our problems have a difficulty rating of 1 to 5. The following problem is a level 5 and illustrates the difference between hints and feedback in the context of one of our more challenging problems. 

The highlighted section below shows a hint that a student could access for this question:

When a student makes a mistake, the resulting feedback is specific to their error:

As a company, offering individualized feedback is the result of an intentional desire to give students an effective homework experience that serves their individual needs.  Hints are there to help all students holistically. And when used together, students experience a learning environment where they have the right tool at their disposal no matter where they are in the problem-solving process.

NOTE: Ultimately, hints and feedback are both ineffective if students never choose to access them. That is why Expert TA encourages its professors to first fine-tune their settings to maximize effectiveness for students. Then, a short conversation with students takes place at the beginning of each semester to encourage them to take advantage of hints and feedback, and to explain the advantages of each and how it will help maximize their student learning.

The Expert TA staff would like to congratulate Dr. Linda Grisham of Massachusetts Bay Community College, who recently won a prestigious Course of Distinction (COD) Award from Massachusetts Colleges Online’s (MCO) 11th Annual Conference of eLearning.

MCO says this about their Course of Distinction Awards:

Massachusetts Colleges Online created the Courses of Distinction Awards to recognize faculty whose course designs best exemplify online education’s potential to enhance teaching and learning. In addition to honoring faculty for their efforts, the COD Awards and the faculty showcases of the COD courses have become an important focus of the MCO annual Sharing Best Practices in e-Learning Conference.

Dr. Grisham’s award recognizes her work with a Physics 101 class, which uses Expert TA’s online homework system,  along with other tools to teach kinematics, dynamics, energy, wave motion, fluids, heat and temperature and kinetic theory of gases and sound.

"This hybrid online course was designed to provide a ‘blended’ experience for students, many of whom are life science majors pursuing careers in medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy and veterinary sciences,” said Grisham. 

Dr. Grisham is one of many exploring the blended classroom philosophy and uses Expert TA's online learning platform because she feels it allows students to come to class prepared to engage.

"I expect my students to complete homework assignments that are designed to reinforce lessons and work done during class and then provide an overview of topics to be covered during the next class meeting,” said Grisham. “It is critical that students come prepared each class to work as active participants, and Expert TA provides a wonderful structure to foster an environment for student success."

Expert TA allows students to learn physics online by working through problems and receiving hints, feedback or both. Instructors have the ability to choose the problems that best align with their textbook content and lectures.

We are so pleased to see the homework applications we developed provide educators with the benefits we envision for them, but most of all we congratulate Dr. Grisham on this award and her outstanding work in the classroom.