As part of the Serving Maths project we have developed a new mathematical question type that is rendered and scored with the help of a computer algebra system. This allows a lot more flexibility in randomizing questions and assessing student answers and giving feedback.
We invite you to try out a few quizzes in the software demo section of our project web site and to author your own questions in the Teacher Demo course.
The new question type is powered by the STACK assessment system which in turn uses the Maxima computer algebra system. Luckily you will not have to install any of this software in order to use the new question type because it consumes these as web services that can be running anywhere on the web and for now we are providing web services for this.
All our software is open-source and GPL and we encourage collaboration.
Hi Gustav,
This looks fantastic - is it something we can use for quizzes on our own moodle server?
Lars.
This looks fantastic - is it something we can use for quizzes on our own moodle server?
Lars.
Wonderful work. What would I need to get this into my moodle installation?
This is awesome!! Will we be able to use this in 1.5?
Yes, the plan is to make the new quiz module part of Moodle 1.5 beta at the end of this week. That will give Moodle a) the ability to handle adaptive questions and b) an RQP web services interface so that it can use questions that are rendered and scored by external applications like STACK or AiM. However I would not use this in production service until extensive beta testing has been completed, expected to last several weeks.