Christian Lawson-Perfect
and
Christopher Graham
Newcastle University.
(Photo Martin Pot, CC-BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Numbas is an open-source system developed by the e-Learning Unit of Newcastle University's School of Maths and Stats, based on many years of use, experience and research into e-assessment.
It's aimed at numerate disciplines.
It creates SCORM-compliant exams which run entirely in the browser, compatible with VLEs such as Blackboard and Moodle.
A large driver for Numbas was the lack of customisability in previous systems.
Interface and logic are completely separated in Numbas - custom themes can change the look of tests, or reimagine how they're run.
Extensions allow the addition of new functions, data types, and resources.
Computer-aided assessment is great for formative assessment.
Students can try randomised questions over and over until they're happy.
Summative assessment poses problems:
On the train up, I had some luck making the variable generator work asynchronously, which would allow calls to remote systems.
Photo © S J Bennett, CC-BY, on Flickr