[mc09] Assessment icebreaker

[jfine]

Hi

This is particularly for the participants how have an interest in e-
assessment.

The morning sessions will cover many of the technical aspects
required, and I hope they'll let you have productive session(s) in the
afternoon.

Looking at the participants list, I identify Sally Barton, Rufus
Curnow, Leslie Fletcher, Trevor Hawkes, Bastiaan Heeren, Tim Lowe, Sue
Milne, Peter Rowlett, Chris Sangwin and Ian Wild having a particular
interest in e-assessment. (Do correct me if there are errors here.)

Please treat this email as a letter of introduction to the people you
don't already know. There's about 10 of you in e-assessment.

If you sent, say to the list, a brief email indicating what you want
to give to and get from the workshop, this might help a lot on the
day. You are the experts in mathematics e-assessment at the workshop,
and to a large degree the success of the workshop is down to your
energy and initiative.

You're also welcome to add files and pages to this group website. Ask
me for help or advice if you're uncertain.

best wishes


Jonathan

[Curnow, Rufus]

Hi all,

As a brief introduction, I'm the commissioning editor for the
mathematics list at Pearson Education. I'm very interested in
e-assessment and how other people are dealing with it. At present, we
are publishing a number of our books with one of our products, MyMathLab
(see http://www.mymathlab.com for details), which is an online homework
and assessment system.

I look forward to meeting you all and sharing our experiences.

Best wishes,
Rufus


Rufus Curnow
Commissioning Editor
Pearson Education
Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex, CM20 2JE
United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)1279 623 327
F: +44 (0)1279 623 866
E: rufus....@pearson.com

This email was sent by a company owned by Pearson plc, registered office at 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL.
Registered in England and Wales with company number 53723

[Sue Milne]

Hi Everyone,

The work I do is aimed broadly at making e-learning and e-assessment in
Mathematics as painless as possible for the student and the practitioner
(tutor, learning technologist,...). It seems to me that if a system is
awkward to handle, it won’t get used, so it’s most efficient to go for
simple (looking) solutions.

For almost a year now we have been working on the MathAssess tools – QTI
V2.1 compliant e-assessment tools for authoring, storing and delivering
e-assessments in Mathematics - within the JISC-funded MathAssess and FETLAR
projects. The results can be played with at our workshop presentation on the
second day of the MSOR-CETL conference, just before lunch (08/09/2009
11:15). If you can, please come to that!

At the Workshop on 09/09/2009, I’d like to talk about what’s going on inside
the tools and why we do it that way, and will be very interested to hear
participants’ comments and suggestions.

Cheers
Sue

Dr Sue Milne
ELandWeb Ltd   Company Registration No. SC312309
Registered Office:
54 Grampian Way, Bearsden, Glasgow, G61 4RW
Tel: +44(0)1419431307 , Mob: +44(0)7780995748  Company website:
http://www.elandweb.co.uk
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-----Original Message-----
From: uk-math-co...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:uk-math-co...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of jfine
Sent: 20 August 2009 12:30
To: UK Mathematics Content Workshop - 9th September 2009
Subject: [mc09] Assessment icebreaker

[Ian Wild]

Hello everyone,

Jonathan is right: I am indeed very interested in e-assessment. I am
both a freelance Moodle trainer and a private mathematics tutor.
Moodle training means visiting schools and colleges throughout the UK
and teaching mathematics in Moodle presents some very real issues:
e.g. creating mathematical notation (both teachers and students),
creating graphs, charts, making content accessible (DDA/Section 508
compliance), &c. In fact teaching mathematics in a "digital
classroom" in general presents problems - it's not just Moodle!

Another thought: Although there are some fantastic tools available for
mathematics teaching I find that a good deal of them don't actually
work in UK schools because their computers are completely locked down.
Sometimes the school admins don't have the authority to specify what
software is installed on their school's machines, bizarrely. In my
experience schools in the UK seem to run Windows, although I am seeing
more IT suites kitted out with Macs these days. Does anyone know the
figures regarding operating systems, browsers, &c. for schools in the
UK, and perhaps Europe as a whole? This is obviously going to be an
important influencing factor. For example, MathML is fine as an
accessible typesetting technology, as it were, but it's not natively
supported in IE. That means that it can sometimes be nearly impossible
to use in a UK school (which even today may well be stuck with IE6 - I
was at one a couple of weeks ago).

Likewise looking forward to meeting you all,

Ian.