Engineering Homework in the Electronic Age

With the widespread availability of the internet and the World Wide Web (www), engineering students today have virtually unlimited access to the solutions to homework problems contained in most of the major engineering textbooks. This makes it difficult for engineering faculty to assign homework problems in their classes and be certain that all students at least attempt the problems on their own before searching for published solutions on line or in the more traditional campus homework files. In this environment it is difficult for instructors to know how to award credit for assigned homework and it also hinders the learning experience of students. There is also the issue of academic honesty, which can be difficult to detect in homework submissions involving solving numerical analyses type engineering problems. This paper looks at this issue and shares some strategies various faculty members have developed to counter the problem.