Skip Navigation


Teaching Mathematics and its Applications Advance Access originally published online on August 22, 2007
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications 2007 26(3):124-133; doi:10.1093/teamat/hrm006
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
26/3/124    most recent
hrm006v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gill, M.
Right arrow Articles by Greenhow, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Computer-aided assessment in mechanics: question design and test evaluation

M. Gill and M. Greenhow

M. Greenhow, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK. E-mail: martin.greenhow{at}brunel.ac.uk

  Abstract

This article describes pedagogic issues in setting objective tests in mechanics using Question Mark Perception, coupled with MathML mathematics mark-up and the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) syntax for producing diagrams. The content of the questions (for a range of question types such as multi-choice, numerical input and variants such as confidence-based questions) is scripted with random parameters, thereby producing many millions of realizations of the underlying ‘question style’. This means that the question setter must completely specify the algebraic and pedagogic structure of the question. For some question types, we need to understand and encode the ways in which students make mistakes, offering them as distracters or recognizing their use in numerical inputs (we call this responsive numerical input). We have examined several years’ worth of exam scripts to discover what ‘mal-rules’ are used for each question and attempted to characterize them with metadata that makes students’ responses recorded in the answer files easier to understand.

Results from evaluation experiments are presented; in particular, we are interested in whether the feedback ‘feeds forward’ to affect students’ approaches to doing problems in a repeat test or exam, delayed by a variable time period (almost immediately, after 1 week, 1 month or more). To quantify this when examining end of semester exam scripts, we looked at four indicators: using units, identifying vectors, using diagrams and emulating the good layout of the feedback screens in their own written solutions.

Received March 2007. Accepted june 2007.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.