As part of one of the many jobs I’m doing at the moment for Newcastle University, I’ve written a web-based maths exam system which runs entirely in the browser, with no plugins, and is SCORM compatible. It uses the excellent MathJax for displaying mathematics; there’s a load of clever programming to allow fully randomised, algebraic answers to questions; and exams are written in a fairly easy-to-understand plaintext format.

Here’s an example of an exam written using Numbas, and here’s the file which generated it. The exam should run in modern Firefoxes, Safaris and Chromes, and IEs 8 and 9. Press the ‘Reveal’ button at the top of the page to see the answers to the questions.

We’re still clearing up exactly who owns the copyright to all this and under what terms it can be distributed, so I can’t provide much more material than this, but someone came to visit us yesterday (to give Bill Foster an award for pioneering e-assessment!) and he said that we should be a lot more public with what we’re doing, so that’s what I’m doing.