Introduction to Numbas

Chris Graham

Director of E-Learning
School of Maths, Stats & Physics, Newcastle University

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This talk

  • About Numbas
  • How we're using Numbas at Newcastle
  • How to get started using Numbas

Hopefully plenty of time for questions / demos.

My colleague Christian Lawson-Perfect will be running the second workshop next week (more hands-on).

About me (briefly)

  • Director of E-Learning / Deputy Director of Education in the School of Maths, Stats & Physics at Newcastle University

  • I use Numbas in my own teaching (of programming for maths and physics students) extensively.

  • My role leads me to be part of many projects using Numbas around our University and beyond

About Numbas

What is Numbas?

Numbas is a web-based e-assessment system designed primarily for mathematical subjects.

  • Developed at Newcastle University for 10 years.
  • Free and open source.
  • Used around the world.

Why use Numbas?

Online assessment of procedural, mathematical questions has two golden features:

🏆 Instant feedback

Get immediate feedback and receive a full solution for each instance of the question.

🏆 Randomisation

Practise similar questions over and over again.

More features:

  • Scalable, reliable and accessible to a broad range of users
  • Easy to use for teachers and students. Used by question authors who aren't experts
  • Customisable everywhere, from the theme to the functionality
  • Flexible delivery: through VLE, standalone, embedded, even offline
  • Lots of maths features
    • JSXGraph, Eukleides, Geogebra integration
    • Support for matrices, vectors, quantities with units
    • Work with data files / JSON
  • Error-carried forward marking
  • Alternative answers

What is Numbas used for?

Pre-entry material, transition, diagnostic tests, in-course practice, in-course assessment, final exams...

A quick look at a Numbas test:

Demo test >

Numbas at Newcastle

Set up

We're a Canvas institution like you:

  • Teachers create questions in the Numbas Editor
  • External (LTI) tool in Canvas for formative and summative assessment
  • Lockdown browser for high stakes assessments

Numbas trends at Newcastle

A few trends from the past year:

  • More diverse and extensive formative assessment
  • Dramatic increase in use, particularly in engineering
  • Remote 'labs' using Numbas
  • Hybrid tests
  • Final exams

Numbas use by department at Newcastle

Others include Psychology, Geography, Politics, foundation programmes...

Units example

 

Formative assessment

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More formative use; more appreciation of the "weekly quiz".

Increasing use in physics, engineering, chemistry...

More diverse applications to ask questions involving e.g. R, SPSS, Minitab.

Handout example >

Remote Labs

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Stripped-down example

Hybrid assessments

Used for in-course assessment and final exams

Typically 60-80% auto-marked. Focus manual marking where it is needed.

Hybrid assessment

Final exams

"4 in 24" hybrid off-campus format used across all of our stage 1 modules in maths and physics.

Some off-campus tests retained for 2021/22, plus around 10 on-campus digital tests.

Hybrid assessment

Getting started with Numbas

Using Numbas

Mathcentre public Numbas Editor at numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk

Open source LTI tool at numbas-lti-provider.readthedocs.io

Public Numbas Editor

Open to everyone.

5,000+ users at 1,000+ institutions registered on public editor.

Collect ready-made questions into a custom test.

8,000+ questions and exams released for free reuse under an open access licence. Translated into 15 languages.

Or write your own.

Next steps

Thanks for listening

Contacts:

Useful links:

Questions?