Automating the generation of mathematical
questions banks
Tristan Robinson
Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering
tristan.robinson@ucl.ac.uk
Engineering Teaching and Learning Workshop
Efficient and Effective Assessment
The talk
• Generating a question bank
• Import a question bank into Moodle
• Examples
Generating a question bank in Moodle
• Time consuming
–
–
–
–
Create individual questions
Unfamiliar formatting
Settings
Provide answers (and wrong answers)
• Evolution of questions
– Static
– Portability
– Dealing with systematic errors in the questions
Matlab GUI: QBank
• Designed for
mathematical questions
• Input data is from Excel
spreadsheets
• Output in XML Moodle
format
Matlab GUI: QBank
• User friendly interface
• Automates the process
as much as possible
• Programme calculates
solutions
• Generate large question
banks (>20 Q)
• Can be adapted for most
applied engineering
applications
Lets generate a Question Bank with 160 Q
• On my desktop (4+ years)
– Differential 68Q in 17 sec
– Integration 182Q in 40 sec
Work in progress:
August 2012
User guide
DB for generating the questions
DB for generating the questions
DB for generating the questions
DB for generating the questions
• You still have to manually enter the
question
• You may still have to learn new
syntax (Excel, Tex, Matlab)
• The question banks remain static
Example of a question bank
Mathematic question banks for 1st and 2nd
year Engineering student
Mathematic question banks for 1st and 2nd
year Engineering student
Mathematic question banks for 1st and 2nd
year Engineering student
Mathematic question banks for 1st and 2nd
year Engineering student
Thank you…
• Lets import the question bank into Moodle
• Lets load this into Moodle
Matlab code
XML Moodle output from DBank
XML Moodle output from DBank
• You do not have to understand the
syntax
• Why XML Moodle output?
– Matlab can generate any output
Import / Export Questions
Import options
Export options (only three)
Functions in Moodle
Emergency and Crisis Planning
Thank you…