3 Steps to Create a WebAssign Course

Shaunna Campbell
Apr 29, 2020
5 min read
create a webassign course
WebAssign
Reading Time: 3 minutes

You can quickly create a WebAssign course to provide your students continuity in their learning process while giving you many avenues to stay connected with your students. Through their WebAssign course, students will also be able to access all assignments, the interactive ebook, study resources, and any additional resources you’ve decided to include in your course.

To begin, let’s help you build your course by guiding you through three critical steps. You’ll find links to step-by-step tutorials throughout to ensure your success.  You can also watch on demand a full Getting Started with WebAssign webinar presented by Faculty Partner Katie Culler of Surry Community College.

Step 1: Create a WebAssign Course

  1. After logging into your instructor account, from the Create shortcut on the main menu, select Course from the drop-down.
  2. You’ll be presented with several fields to fill in about your course, including the course name and start and end dates of the class.
  3. You decide how students will enroll in your course (if you select the self-enroll option, WebAssign will email you a Class Key to share with your students to register for the correct section).
  4. Select the textbook you’re using in the course from the Textbook selector and then add any Free Additional Content that you may want to add to your course.
  5. Click Create Course and you’re done! Your course is now created. Next you just have to populate it with assignments.

WATCH: For a quick video overview on this process, watch WebAssign: Creating a New Course

Step 2: Download or Create Your Assignments

Once your create a WebAssign course, you can build your own assignments from scratch, or you can choose to download a Course Pack. A Course Pack is a collection of ready-to-use assignments that have been pre-built for your textbook by our subject matter experts.

Option 1: Download & Use a Course Pack

If the textbook you selected has a Course Pack available, WebAssign will notify you of this as soon as you finish creating your course. You can preview the Course Pack, and choose to add the Course Pack to your WebAssign account. While a Course Pack includes a full semester of content in addition to a Getting Started with WebAssign Assignment, after downloading, you can choose to assign just the assignments that you need.

You can edit any assignment in a Course Pack once you’ve downloaded it but if you’re truly in a rush, you can always do that later. Skip down to Step Three to finish setting up your WebAssign course.

Option 2: Build Your Own Assignments

If your selected textbook does not include a Course Pack, or if you simply prefer to build your own assignments.

  1. Click the Create shortcut on the main menu and select Assignment. This will bring you to the Assignment Editor.
    • Here you will find default assignment templates, where we’ve analyzed the most common settings and pre-built Homework, Quiz, Test, Exam and Practice templates for you. You can fully customize the way your assignment behaves by configuring the Assignment Template.
  2. Select the Assignment Template, name the assignment and add any instructions you want your students to see.
  3. Find questions using the Question Browser – designed to simplify this process. All available questions are organized by the Table of Contents of your selected textbook – which you can use as a guide in finding questions.
  4. Select your questions by clicking on the question name to add it to your assignment. You have access to question difficulty and time required to complete the question right from the Question Browser.
  5. When you’re finished, click Update the Assignment to return to the Assignment Editor, and click Save.

Now, you can either schedule the assignment (see Step 3) or build the rest of your assignments to schedule later.

WATCH: WebAssign: Creating an Assignment

Step 3: Schedule Your Assignments

Whether you’ve downloaded a Course Pack or built your own assignments, you still have to make them available to students from your Class Schedule page.

  1. Click the Class Schedule from the left-hand Class Tools navigation in your course. The Schedule page will show all of your assignments on the left Assignments pane, including your Course Packs and a weekly view of your course schedule on the Schedule pane.
  2. Select the assignment you want to schedule from the left and drag it to the week you want the assignment to be due on the right.
  3. The scheduler will open so you can configure the due date.
    • By default, the assignment will become available immediately to students and students will be able to view it until the end of the course. If you want to change that, click the calendar icon by the Available date and View Until date.
    • Click Schedule. You’ve now scheduled your first assignment.

Repeat this process for all of your assignments. WebAssign remembers how you scheduled the last assignment and suggests a due date for you, which will save you time.

WebAssign offers many more scheduling features, such as testing options and the ability to conditionally release assignments based on student performance on prerequisite assignments. We invite you to explore this functionality when you have more time.

WATCH: WebAssign: Scheduling an Assignment

 

Looking for More WebAssign Tips?

Transitioning to a virtual or hybrid course is stressful – let us help! Keep in mind the following resources that are available to you.