MapleTA is an online assignment and quiz system backed by the Maple mathematics engine[1] that allows questions to be graded using Maple to match and evaluate student answers mathematically, something most quiz systems cannot do.
MapleTA is an advance over other quiz systems because it
The key attraction of any quiz system is to give some indication of how well students understand their subject. A pre-lecture quiz based on advanced reading of the day's topic can prime students for a lecture. A post-lecture quiz allows the following lecture to deal with any student weaknesses revealed by the quiz results. Students can monitor their understanding with short review quizzes that give instant, automatic feedback and practice.
Many different question types are available including questions generated by templates and variables so students see similar but not identical questions. A single question template is capable of generating a very large bank of questions, released in a random order. Questions can make use of physical units, error bounds, constraint expressions, and Maple procedures. Maple graphs can be included in questions for display or for interaction with a student e.g. selecting an area of the graph or plotting points on a curve.
Questions can be created using the online math editor or with LaTeX. MathML is used to accurately display mathematics notation.
MapleTA is freely available within all departments and faculties at UW.
The talk will cover
A presentation about MapleTA from the December WatItis 2006 conference (select year 2006) session A Look at Quiz Systems in Mathematical Subjects by Paul Kates and Sean Scott is available in pdf format at
www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~pkates/mapleTA/WatITis-2006/C2watitis06-mapleta.pdf
Paul Kates
pkates@uwaterloo.ca, x37047
Last modification date: Mon Jun 07 10:43:34 2010.