Electronic self-tests with automatic evaluation of answers given by students are a good option to give students regular opportunities to practice and to enable them to check their learning progress independently. Subjects with a high proportion of mathematics, however, face a major problem: closed task formats such as multiple choice questions, in which the answers are merely selected from predefined options, do not adequately reflect the demands placed on students.
The question type STACK for the activity “Quiz” in RWTHmoodle offers a remedy for this problem. STACK uses the computer algebra system “Maxima” to evaluate the mathematical expressions that students enter as answers. The input can be for example a variable, a function term, an equation, a matrix or a set.
A STACK task could look like this
Source: Own illustration
Teachers can create structured templates for a question, based on which different versions of the question are randomly generated and displayed. Maxima uses tests to prove the mathematical properties of the answer input. Based on the properties, feedback is generated with the help of an answer tree and returned to the students as assistance. You can create multipart questions and assign subpoints. Graphical representations can be generated dynamically.
The task type can be used in all RWTHmoodle course rooms from summer semester 2020 onwards within the activity “Quiz”. As an introduction to STACK the RWTHmoodle support provides an own demo course room for STACK, which contains introductory videos, links to the STACK documentation and numerous sample questions and quizzes.
You would like to get access to the demo course room? You have general questions about STACK? Please contact the RWTHmoodle support.
Responsible for the content of this article is Harald Schnurbusch.
