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A. Zimmermann, V. Urbonaite, A. Körner, S. Winkler, S. Krause, M Kleinert:
"Advanced Randomization and Grading in the E-Learning System Maple T.A.";
Talk: EUROSIM 2010 - 7th Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Prague, Czech Republic; 2010-09-06 - 2010-09-10; in: "Proceedings of the 7th Congress on Modelling and Simulation", M. Snorek, M. Cepek, Z. Buk, J. Drchal (ed.); Vol.2 Full Papers (2010), ISBN: 978-80-01-04589-3; 1209 - 1214.

In this paper we introduce an enhanced use of the web-based e-learning system Maple T.A, that is distributed by the company MapleSoft. At the Vienna University of Technology the software is additionally attached to common mathematical lectures and provides some useful practice and assignment capabilities for students. Main advantages of the system are the abilities to create mathematical exercises with randomized specifications and to automatically verify the correctness of students´ responses. For both tasks, the randomization and the grading, Maple T.A. provides certain functions. With increasing complexity of the exercises these common methods are not sufficient. Especially more complex mathematical objects like vectors, matrices, etc. showed to be difficult to handle, since there are no standard functions implemented.
For this purpose Maple T.A. allows to integrate Maple code, that assumes the randomization and grading of mathematical objects of these types. The generation of these Maple algorithms is not always an easy task, on the other hand it didn´t turn out to be necessary to develop each algorithm over and over again because some of the problems equal each other to a certain degree. Within this paper we describe methods and algorithms that build the basis of additional moduls, that were created for simplification of above mentioned tasks and give some concrete practical examples, as they are used in mathematical lectures.

Maple T.A., Maple, e-learning, blended learning