Is Numbas the best thing since sliced bread?

The Mathematics Education Support Hub (MESH) at Western Sydney University (WSU) had been investigating the use of Numbas for mathematics support for some time but the onset of COVID-19 and enforced online education has meant that the platform has become a central part of our support offerings and is being included in several mainstream subjects. To date Numbas has been used to

  • provide over 90 formative and summative assessments in the online version of our Maths Start workshops providing refresher material in algebra, trigonometry, calculus and statistics for incoming students;
  • assist nursing students in the mastery of basic numeracy;
  • provide a hurdle assessment on basic mathematics in a first year programming subject;
  • deliver questions for class tests in a discrete mathematics unit.

In this talk we will discuss some of the features of the system that have been of particular use and some of the pitfalls we have had to overcome in writing this material.

Resources