Dear Instructor,

Happy first-Tuesday! We have just rolled out over 45 more enhancements to WebAssign. This month's release includes several major upgrades to features which had been released earlier in the year, and improves the look and feel of the assignment scheduling and student online purchasing screens. Read on for details of the most significant changes...

Instructor-Uploaded Resources

WebAssign now makes it possible for you to upload your own resources and post them to students within the Resources module on their home page.

This builds upon the recently-released resources feature, which gave you access to media rich assets such as text specific presentations and videos, available now in select textbooks. If you are using a book with existing Resources, you can even add your own files to the book's resource list for your students—so that they appear with all of the other items for that chapter.

If your book uses this feature, a Resources tab is displayed on your ClassView page.

Personal Study Plan is Now an Optional Category in the GradeBook

Another recently released feature has been upgraded this month. The Personal Study Plan, which will be available for many books in developmental math for fall, can now be a for-credit category in your GradeBook.

You specify how much credit completion of the Personal Study Plan is worth toward students' final grades. Each chapter of the study plan will show up like an assignment in the GradeBook.

If you don't yet use the WebAssign GradeBook, this may be the time to check it out!

Upgrades to the Student Purchasing Process

Your students should find the online WebAssign purchasing process clearer and easier to use. They also now have the ability to purchase access online using a checking account that is linked to a Paypal account, so even if they do not have access to a credit card they will be able to pay for WebAssign online.

Assignment Schedule Page Redesign

We upgraded the look and feel of the assignment scheduling page. All of the same options are there; we just organized them a bit more clearly.

There is one new feature related to scheduling as well. Per popular request, we have made it possible for you to specify that all the Restrictions you can set on an assignment, such as password and IP restrictions, are removed after the assignment due date so your students can access the assignment later to study.

Instructor and Student Guides Updated

Our Instructor and Student Guides have been updated to include information about these new features and more.

After logging in to WebAssign just click Help in the top-right area of the screen to access the full guide, in webhelp format. The PDF version of the guide is also available from within this Help window.

If there is ever anything you are unable to find in our documentation, please let us know!

Pricing Changes

In addition to new features, please note that our 2009–2010 pricing is now in effect. The price to students differs depending on the textbook you use in your course.

The pricing page on our website will be updated with this new information soon. In the meantime if you have any questions please contact customer service.

We hope you find this month's new features useful. As always, let us know what you would like to see in WebAssign next!

The WebAssign Team