Frequently Asked Questions

Can you help me get started?

Have a look at the tutorials we’ve prepared, which will show you how to use the Numbas editor and deliver exams to your students.

We often run training sessions for new Numbas users. You can find out about upcoming training sessions by following the blog. There are recordings of some past sessions in the documentation.

We also have a discussion forum where Numbas users can talk about their progress and get tips from the community.

Go to our Google Group to find out more.

How can I share my tests with my students?

Numbas exams can run standalone, or connected to a Virtual Learning Environment. When running standalone, students get immediate feedback but the scores aren’t saved. In order to save data, you have to run the exam through a VLE.

To run a Numbas exam standalone, share the embed link from the editor with your students. You can paste this link into any page to embed an exam or question amongst your other content.

To save data about each student’s attempt at a Numbas exam, deliver it with the Numbas LTI provider or your VLE’s built-in SCORM player.

There’s more on delivering exams to students in the Numbas documentation.

How can I get in touch with you?

Whether you want to share something you’ve created, got stuck and need some help, or you have an idea for an improvement to Numbas, we are always interested in hearing from you.

You can:

How much does it cost?

We have created Numbas to be a valuable resource for educators, regardless of their budget. This is why the system is free and open-source, meaning that anyone can edit or adapt it to their needs.

Can I connect to Numbas via LTI?

There is an open-source LTI tool provider for Numbas.

Because we’re limited in resources, we don’t offer a publicly-accessible instance of this tool: you must install and run it on your own infrastructure. Or, alternatively, you can e-mail us (at numbas@ncl.ac.uk) to discuss a paid hosting contract.

Have a look at our guide to what you need.

How can I cite the Numbas software?

We maintain a CITATION.cff file in the main Numbas repository, describing how to cite the software.

Here’s a BibTeX entry you could use:

@software{Lawson-Perfect_Numbas_2021,
  author = {Lawson-Perfect, Christian and Foster, William and Youd, Anthony and Graham, Christopher and Stagg, George},
  license = {Apache-2.0},
  title = {{Numbas}},
  url = {https://github.com/numbas/Numbas/},
  version = {v6.2},
  year = {2022},
  month = {6}
}

Do you by any chance also have a means of producing accessible course notes and slides?

This isn’t specifically Numbas-related, but another of the e-learning unit’s projects is Chirun, a tool to convert text or slides written in LaTeX or Markdown to an accessible HTML format.