Development and integration of computer-aided assessment of discrete mathematics

The principal aims of this project were to exploit and extend existing computer-aided assessments (CAA) in elementary discrete mathematics (sets, logic and graph theory) that form part of the Mathletics system. These questions were written in an extended form of Question Mark’s Perception version 3 (P3) and exploit random parameters throughout, including very full feedback and diagrams, thereby generating thousands of rich questions that form an effective learning resource. Although within P3 one can successfully encode algorithms that generate questions with specified characteristics, their answers and distracters based on mal-rules (incorrect but structured mistakes), it has not proved feasible to translate them to Perception version 5 (P5) as originally proposed. We therefore exploited an online web application, MathsE.G. developed under another project. This was designed to require little editing of original question content and needs no external software.