to uniserveedit06@usyd.edu.au
I think that I would prefer a paper to a poster, 
but any method whereby I can demo at least some of the systems 
is OK. If I give a paper, I would need internet access
for a laptop with display through the overhead projection
system. With a poster, just internet access would be OK.
The title and abstract follow.
Grant Keady (keady@maths.uwa.edu.au)


Computer Aided Assessment in Mathematical Sciences

Grant Keady, University of Western Australia
keady@maths.uwa.edu.au

Gary Fitz-Gerald, RMIT
garyfitz@rmit.edu.au

Greg Gamble, Curtin University
gregg@maths.curtin.edu.au

Chris Sangwin, University of Birmingham
C.J.Sangwin@bham.ac.uk


ABSTRACT.
The Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) systems treated in this
paper 
* involve the delivery of questions across the web;
* are underpinned by Computer Algebra (CA) packages.
The CA underpinnings allow the students to to enter answers, 
have them 
 parsed by the CA system,
 type-checked by the CA system, and 
 then passed through a marking procedure which can
recognize any correct form of the answer.
The CA underpinning also allows one to generate model solutions
(after due-dates) and to provide many forms of feedback.
In this way, the systems are more for "Computer Aided Learning" 
than for "Assessment".

These CAA systems have been successfully used in a
moderate number of Mathematics Departments,
but few Physics Departments.
One function of the paper is to publicise them to a
wider community. In particular, the underlying CA packages
are widely used by physicists (and, in some cases,
were written by physicists). As authoring for any of
these CAA involves coding in the CA package underpinning it,
physicist users of the same CA are well-placed to use
the CAA systems.

Information, and often guest logins, to some of the systems 
are available at
http://aim.maths.uwa.edu.au
https://calmaeth.maths.uwa.edu.au
http://stack.bham.ac.uk
http://weblearn.rmit.edu.au

The CAA systems range from 
* totally free and open-source 
(e.g. stack, underpinned by maxima), through
* free and open-source except for the CA
(e.g. AiM, underpinned by maple), to
* commercial (e.g. mapleTA and webLearn- both underpinned by maple- and
calmaeth and MyMathLab/mathxl -both underpinned by mathematica).

The integration of this sort of CAA with 
widely used Managed Learning Environments 
(WebCT, moodle, etc.) is developing.
This would harmonize the students' learning experience
across different subjects (at the very least avoiding
a separate login for the mathematics CAA).
We will speculate on how the genre may develop.