In Germany, education is controlled by the lands of the Federal Republic. The Virtual Campus Rhineland Palatine (VCRP) is an organisation of the public universities of the land Rhineland-Palatine. Its mission is to provide technical and didactic support for the use of digital media in higher education. In general, VCRP provides second level support for universities, being mainly directed to the local eLearning support unit.
For Math education, however, VCRP provides direct support for university staff. A key component for digital Math education is the eAssessment system IMathAS, hosted by VCRP since ca. 10 years. It may be compared with the Numbas system used in the UK.
Hosted by VCRP, IMathAS provides a library of some 1,000 automatically graded math questions, ready for use by all participating universities. This central library is most valuable in particular for new instructors using IMathAS. This central IMathAS instance is integrated into the central VCRP LMS Open OLAT as well as into LMSs run locally.
University staff using IMathAS is supported by eMail, forums, workshops and by repositories of support material.
The further development of IMathAS has been supported by tools that facilitate the use of computer algebra systems, the didactic analysis of online test results and the use of genrative AI.
Resources
- slides.pdf (.pdf)