Christian Lawson-Perfect

Recordings of Numbas training sessions

Here are the recordings of our recent training sessions held over Zoom.

First, there was a beginners’ session on the 15th of July, covering the Numbas editing interface, how to deliver exams to students, and writing a first question:

And an advanced session on the 22nd, covering explore mode, custom marking algorithms, and custom part types:

Numbas training sessions

We’re planning on running another Numbas training session for beginners, following the series we ran in March and April.

The first session is scheduled for 10:00 BST on Wednesday 15th July. It’ll run over Zoom and last about two hours. No previous knowledge of Numbas will be assumed.

Following demand, we’ve scheduled a more advanced training session, for experienced Numbas users.

This will take place at 10:00 BST on Wednesday 22nd July. Again, it’ll run over Zoom and last about two hours. Christian will demonstrate a few things, then there’ll be time to work through question-authoring problems from attendees.

Register for a training session:

If you’re looking to start using Numbas in a hurry because of the CoViD-19 crisis, have a look at our blog post about how Numbas can help.

Numbas v5.0

Montage of screenshots of Numbas v5

It’s time for another major version of Numbas. This release includes a radically new way of presenting questions, as well as a few other helpful new features.

We’ve made a short video to demonstrate the new features:

We’ve also made a demo exam so you can try it out yourself.

Read the rest

Recording of online Numbas training session

This morning we ran the second of our online Numbas training sessions organised in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Here’s the recording of the session:

There’s at least one more session to go, at 10:00 BST next Wednesday, April 8th. You can still register to attend. If there’s demand for it, we might schedule more sessions.

How Numbas can help during the COVID-19 crisis

Now that face-to-face teaching in many institutions has been cancelled in response to the coronavirus crisis, many lecturers are looking for ways to move their teaching and assessment online. 

We’ve put this page together as a reference to describe how Numbas could be used to help your students and to replace paper-based assessments. 

Read the rest

Accessibility statements for Numbas

A few people have asked us for an accessibility statement before they start using Numbas, so we’ve written one.

In fact, we’ve written two: one for the exam interface seen by students, and one for the editor.

The statements describe the accessibility requirements that we’ve designed Numbas around, some tips on how to use Numbas effectively with different assistive technologies, and details on the outstanding accessibility issues that we know about.

If you’ve got any feedback about the statements or accessibility in Numbas, please let us know.

Out now: Numbas v3.0, the marking algorithms rewrite

Today we’ve released Numbas v3.0. It’s the thing I’m second-most proud of producing in the last year (my daughter was born last October).

The marking code at the heart of Numbas has been completely rewritten, to make it much easier for question authors to change how students’ answers are marked. This has also allowed the introduction of custom part types, to make it easier to use and reuse different marking algorithms. Read the rest

Announcing the EAMS conference 2018

EAMS logo

The international conference on E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences (EAMS) is a three-day academic conference organised by Newcastle University taking place 28th – 30th August 2018.

Building on the success of EAMS 2016, the conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners with an interest in e-assessment for mathematics and the sciences, with an emphasis on enabling attendees to have a go at creating material, and getting an opportunity to share expertise directly. It will consist of a mix of presentations of new techniques, and pedagogic research, as well as live demos and workshops where you can get hands-on with leading e-assessment software.

Photo of EAMS 2016 attendees during a hands-on computer lab session

Photo of the audience during a talk at EAMS 2016

Over three days, EAMS 2018 will comprise a mix of talks and hands-on activities:

  • Developer updates from the people responsible for popular mathematical e-assessment systems, detailing the latest features.
  • Lightning talks on a variety of topics to do with e-assessment in mathematical disciplines.
  • Hands-on workshops led by experts in a variety of e-assessment systems.
  • Live demos led by experts in the field.
  • Code sprints with the aim of adding features to systems, writing documentation, or creating material on a particular topic.

Compared to EAMS 2016, the emphasis this time is much more on enabling attendees to have a go at creating material, and getting an opportunity to share expertise directly.

The call for talk and workshop proposals is currently open. If you have some research or an innovative technique related to mathematical e-assessment that you would like to present, EAMS 2018 is the perfect venue. The deadline for talk proposals is May 31st.

The conference fee is only £75 and includes a conference dinner. You can find out more about EAMS, as well as the forms to register for the conference and propose a talk, at the conference website, eams.ncl.ac.uk.