We have now used ARIS for one semester. It was chosen because it seemed easy for faculty to set up and manage. The publisher provided us with three hours of in-person training when we began using the system, along with online resources. We have found McGraw-Hill to be very responsive to the technical issues that we encountered throughout the semester.

The text that we are currently using, by Julia Burdge, was new in fall 2008 (1). The homework system in ARIS is text-specific, but access is allowed to problems from other McGraw-Hill texts. ARIS is a stand-alone homework system, but grades can be downloaded in a form that can then be read by other course management systems. Since our campus course management system is somewhat obscure—it’s from Campus Cruiser (2)—direct integration was not at all possible.

There is a wide variety of problems available to use. The text-specific problems can be viewed by chapter, by section, or by learning objective. Problems range from simple multiple-choice to fill-in-the-blank to problems in which students must draw molecular structures. Some problems have accompanying tutorials that students can access while attempting the problem. The system also has self quizzes, available either as assigned work or for optional student self study. I found the variety of problems on ARIS sufficient to the point where I needed to write very few of my own. This is in contrast to other systems that I had used where I found myself writing quite a few of my own problems to supplement those provided.

Students find ARIS easy to use and are therefore inclined to use the system in spite of their not really wanting to do homework. I have found that having a graded homework component to the course, worth 10–15% of the final grade, encourages students to focus on what they need to learn to master the material, which includes practice solving problems. I have noticed that since I have been using online homework, student conversations before class starts seem to be more about chemistry. My students also like the ability to chat with me online using a whiteboard on which we can all write equations or structures, one of the features of ARIS.

If students purchase their texts through our campus bookstore, the access key for ARIS comes bundled with the text. Otherwise the cost for a one-year passkey is $50. This means that the student incurs no extra cost for using the system a second semester with the same text.

One of the main frustrations I’ve had with the system is that multiple-part problems are scored as one piece—no partial credit is given for getting parts of the problem correct. Students have expressed frustration about this, because they don’t see exactly which part of the problem they got incorrect. Both faculty and students from our campus have made the publisher aware of this concern, and promises have been made on the part of the publisher to remedy this. On the other hand, I’ve had very few problems with students trying to figure out how to use the system in the first place. They seemed to have an easy time navigating the system and submitting homework assignments. Additionally, my colleagues who were new to online homework this semester also had an easy time figuring out how to create assignments in ARIS. I have found that composing my own homework problems in ARIS is fairly easy compared with some other online systems that I have used.

Based on our short time using ARIS, we are pleased with the system overall. The ease with which assignments can be set up has been helpful to our faculty. More important is the fact that students are using the system, and they claim that it has been beneficial for their success in the general chemistry course.

Literature Cited

1. Burdge, Julia. Chemistry; McGraw-Hill: New York, 2009.
2. Campus Cruiser is published by TimeCruiser Computing Corp., 9 Law Drive, 2nd Floor, Fairfield, NJ 07004 (accessed Feb 2009).