Numbas user meeting, Spring 2022

The first Numbas user meeting will take place online between 25th and 29th April, 2022.

The main aims of the meeting are to:

  • Share ideas and best practice.
  • Offer training for beginners and advanced users.
  • Bring together case studies for a brochure / Numbas website.
  • Collaborate on documentation.
  • Develop interest in the Numbas Open Resource Library.

This is an opportunity for Numbas users to share what they’re doing, and learn from others.

We’re particularly interested in collecting case studies of good Numbas use, to publish later this year.

Format

There will be two live sessions each day, usually 09:00-10:00 and 15:00-16:00 BST (UTC+1). Some sessions are slightly longer. Each session will consist of either be a hands-on activity, or a group of three talks.

The meeting will take place in gather.town, a virtual meeting space.

Contributed talks will be at most 15 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions. We’d prefer talks to be pre-recorded.

Recordings of talks will be available to watch at any time.

Programme

The programme of talks is now online.

Other activities will include:

  • Development update from Christian Lawson-Perfect.
  • Training sessions for beginners and advanced users.
  • Drop-in support with the Numbas development team on hand to answer your queries.
  • Let’s fill the Numbas Open Resource Library – submit open-access material to the Numbas Open Resource Library; moderate submissions.

Accessibility

Communication to do with the meeting will be conducted by email using the address you register with.

Supporting material for the meeting will be published on numbas.org.uk, in accessible HTML format.

Recorded talks will all have subtitles, written by humans, and slides will be available in advance where possible.

All live activity will take place through gather.town. See their accessibility statement.

If you have any access requirements not mentioned here, or questions about any of the above, please email us.

If you need help at any point during the meeting, email us or talk to the organisers in gather.town:

  • Christian Lawson-Perfect
  • Chris Graham
  • George Stagg
  • Aamir Khan

Register

To attend the meeting, please fill in the registration form.

Registration to attend will be open until the end of the meeting.

Case studies

We’d like to collect case studies of Numbas use.

For each talk, we’d like an accompanying document of one or two pages, describing what you did and evidence of its success. The document does not need to be submitted along with the talk proposal, but we’d like to receive it before the meeting starts.

A case study should contain some or all of:

  • The institution(s) involved.
  • Was this your first time using Numbas?
  • Academic subjects involved – e.g. maths, engineering, sciences.
  • How the Numbas material was delivered – e.g. through a VLE; SCORM player or LTI tool; standalone on the web.
  • How much institutional support you got, or didn’t get – e.g. funding; dedicated staff time.
  • Main drivers for use – e.g. for formative / summative assessment; to reduce human marking load; the pandemic.
  • Aims for the Numbas material – e.g. to support transition; practice and revision during teaching; final exams.
  • Evidence of success: quotes from staff and students; statistics.
  • What you felt were the most important benefits of Numbas.
  • Images – photos of people; screenshots of material.

To get a better idea of what we’re after, see this example case study about our use of Numbas for final exams during lockdown in 2020.

The case studies will be published on this site later in the year. We may select some case studies to be developed further, in collaboration with the submitters.

We intend to arrange light peer review for each case study: we will ask submitters of each case study to review one other case study and give feedback.