Paper-based e-assessment

Wednesday
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The Boiler House

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Numbas has proven to be very effective and useful as a tool for formative assessment, but like many forms of e-assessment suffers from issues around resources/security/integrity for summative assessment purposes. Finding facilities and resources for exam conditions with large classes in a computer lab can prove a challenge; allowing students to complete the work unsupervised is less than secure.

Auto-multiple-choice (AMC) is an open source piece of software designed to handle the production and marking of multiple choice questionnaires, typically paper-based. It allows for shuffling of the order of answers, questions, groups of questions, and selecting questions randomly from a bank. It runs on a LaTeX basis, which means it handles mathematics and images well and can allow for the use of randomised variables in questions and answers etc. It is ideal for paper-based in-class assessments.

Together, the two systems allow for an online bank of formative assessment from which a related paper-based exam can be produced, and then scanned and marked using software.

I’d like to give a brief introduction to how I use the two systems in combination and seek feedback for how to streamline the process.