JISC

Continuation and sustainability are addressed through the FETLAR Project. Further information.

Overview

For many years, partner institutions on this project, Liverpool John Moores University, and the Universities of Glasgow and Portsmouth, have used e-assessment as a crucial part of the delivery of mathematics courses, particularly for service modules at Levels 0 and 1. The system which they currently use, CALMAT, is no longer supported and hence has a limited future. There is an urgent need to provide alternative facilities of comparable scope and flexibility before this legacy software becomes unusable, and, in doing so, to take steps to prevent a repetition of the problems caused by unsustainable software.

Aims and objectives

MathAssess will utilize a version of the QTI toolkit (ASDEL, AQuRate, Minibix, R2Q2), extended to include the MathQTI specification in item authoring and rendering to handle mathematical elements. To enable the use of algebraic expressions within questions, a Computer Algebra System will be incorporated into the item rendering and template processing calculations. Tools for integration with the gradebooks at least on the Moodle VLE will be created and tested.

Project methodology

• AQuRate
•     Integration of the AQuRate authoring tool into the assessment suite,
•      Incorporation of MathQTI elements into AQuRate, enabling authors to create MathQTI items alongside “normal” QTIv2.1 items.
• Minibix
•     Extension of Minibix to provide assessment banking capabilities.
•     Development of a front-end gateway which would permit only authorized users to contribute questions and assessments to the bank.
• ASDEL
•     Provision of flexible and robust test construction capability
•     Integration of test and item delivery with VLE gradebooks.
• R2Q2
•     Implementation of MathQTI in R2Q2, including CAS provision;
•     Implementation of R2Q2 into item authoring.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

• MathQTI-enabled item authoring using AQuRate and R2Q2,
• Computer Algebra System (CAS) support in item delivery,
• Assessment authoring, building on the basic authoring facilities created in ASDEL and using the R2Q2 web service, augmented with MathQTI, for rendering,
• Assessment banking utilising Minibix for storage, searching and version control,
• MathQTI-enabled assessment delivery using ASDEL and R2Q2,
• Integration of the authoring and delivery facilities into at least on the Moodle, which is used at the University of Glasgow.

Technology / Standards used

• QTI 2.1
• XML
• HTML
• XHTML
• LaTeX

Lead Institution

• Liverpool John Moores University