Introduction to Numbas
Chris Graham
Director of E-Learning
School of Maths, Stats & Physics, Newcastle University
This talk
- About Numbas
- How we're using Numbas at Newcastle
- How to get started using Numbas
Hopefully plenty of time for questions / demos.
My colleague Christian Lawson-Perfect will be running the second workshop next week (more hands-on).
About me (briefly)
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Director of E-Learning / Deputy Director of Education in the School of Maths, Stats & Physics at Newcastle University
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I use Numbas in my own teaching (of programming for maths and physics students) extensively.
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My role leads me to be part of many projects using Numbas around our University and beyond
About Numbas
What is Numbas?
Numbas is a web-based e-assessment system designed primarily for mathematical subjects.
- Developed at Newcastle University for 10 years.
- Free and open source.
- Used around the world.
Why use Numbas?
Online assessment of procedural, mathematical questions has two golden features:
🏆 Instant feedback
Get immediate feedback and receive a full solution for each instance of the question.
🏆 Randomisation
Practise similar questions over and over again.
More features:
- Scalable, reliable and accessible to a broad range of users
- Easy to use for teachers and students. Used by question authors who aren't experts
- Customisable everywhere, from the theme to the functionality
- Flexible delivery: through VLE, standalone, embedded, even offline
- Lots of maths features
- JSXGraph, Eukleides, Geogebra integration
- Support for matrices, vectors, quantities with units
- Work with data files / JSON
- Error-carried forward marking
- Alternative answers
What is Numbas used for?
Pre-entry material, transition, diagnostic tests, in-course practice, in-course assessment, final exams...
A quick look at a Numbas test:
Numbas at Newcastle
Set up
We're a Canvas institution like you:
- Teachers create questions in the Numbas Editor
- External (LTI) tool in Canvas for formative and summative assessment
- Lockdown browser for high stakes assessments
Numbas trends at Newcastle
A few trends from the past year:
- More diverse and extensive formative assessment
- Dramatic increase in use, particularly in engineering
- Remote 'labs' using Numbas
- Hybrid tests
- Final exams
Numbas use by department at Newcastle
Others include Psychology, Geography, Politics, foundation programmes...
Units example
Formative assessment
More formative use; more appreciation of the "weekly quiz".
Increasing use in physics, engineering, chemistry...
More diverse applications to ask questions involving e.g. R, SPSS, Minitab.
Remote Labs
Hybrid assessments
Used for in-course assessment and final exams
Typically 60-80% auto-marked. Focus manual marking where it is needed.
Final exams
"4 in 24" hybrid off-campus format used across all of our stage 1 modules in maths and physics.
Some off-campus tests retained for 2021/22, plus around 10 on-campus digital tests.
Getting started with Numbas
Using Numbas
Mathcentre public Numbas Editor at numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk
Open source LTI tool at numbas-lti-provider.readthedocs.io
Public Numbas Editor
Open to everyone.
5,000+ users at 1,000+ institutions registered on public editor.
Collect ready-made questions into a custom test.
8,000+ questions and exams released for free reuse under an open access licence. Translated into 15 languages.
Or write your own.
Next steps
- Create an account on the Numbas Editor
- Navigate to the Numbas documentation
(numbas-editor.readthedocs.io) - Try out the first question tutorial
Thanks for listening
Contacts:
Useful links:
- Numbas Website numbas.org.uk
- Numbas Editor numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk