I am pleased to announce that a new release of Maple T.A., our online testing and assessment system, is now available. Maple T.A. 2017 includes significant enhancements to learning management system integration, as well as security, performance, and other improvements. These same improvements are also available in a new version of the  Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite.  For more information, see What’s New in Maple T.A. 

I am pleased to announce that we have just released a significant update to Maple T.A. 2016, our online assessment system.

Maple T.A. 2016.1 includes a wide range of features and improvements that have been requested by customers, including new options for questions and assignments, improved content management, and enhanced integration with course management systems. It also includes a substantial number of small enhancements and corrections across all areas of the product, providing improved responsiveness, more efficient load handling, and smoother workflow for instructors and students.

For more information, visit What’s New in Maple T.A.

Jonny Zivku
Product Manager, Online Education Products

Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen has created 105 questions related to engineering mechanics for structures (statics/construction). These 105 randomised questions with graphics are used for first year students in civil engineering, structural engineering, architectural engineering and building engineering.

The topics of the course modules are as follows:
- Force Vectors (10)
- Support Reactions (26)
- Internal Forces (31)
- Stress (21)
- Trusses (17)

All questions have a translation button which makes it easy to switch from English to any other language. The questions are first shown in Dutch [NL] but by clicking [UK] in the Preview, the English version is shown. The text can easily be edited and changed into the language of choice in the Maple T.A. question editor. Only the button needs adjustment in the question source.

60 questions are “exercises“ which means that these questions have extended feedback. The remaining questions (45) are “tests” meaning that the questions include no feedback.

Cone.zip - construction exercises (60 questions)

Cont.zip - construction tests (45 questions)

Jonny
Maplesoft Product Manager, Online Education Products

Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite  2016 is now available. It leverages all the improvements found in Maple T.A. 2016, including:

• A redesigned authoring workflow that makes it faster and easier to create and modify questions and assignments
• A new content repository that makes it substantially easier to manage and search for content
• New built-in connectivity options for integration with course management systems

To learn more, visit What’s New in Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite 2016.

Jonny
Maplesoft Product Manager, Online Education Products

I’m pleased to announce the release of Maple T.A. 2016, our online assessment system.

For this release, we put a lot of effort into streamlining the authoring experience. We worked closely with customers to find out how they authored content, the places where they found the interface awkward, the tasks that took longer than they should have, and what they’d like to see changed. Then we made it better.

Right away you’ll notice that questions and assignments are no longer in separate places in Maple T.A. All your content is stored in a convenient location that makes it simple to browse your content. Contextual navigation, filtering options, sorting tools, question details, drag and drop organization, combined import feature, and more make it easier than ever to find and organize your content. The Maple T.A. Cloud also sees improvements. Not only can questions be shared, but assignments and entire course modules can be as well.

For question creation, we consolidated all question authoring into the question designer, so you have a single starting point no matter what kind of question you want to create. We have also refined the text editor to help authors find the tools they need to modify their questions. This includes embedding external content, importing questions from the repository, text formatting options, and more.

Of course, once you have questions, you’ll want to put them into an assignment, and assignment creation is now easier than ever. A key change is that you can now create and modify questions while you are creating an assignment, without having to leave the assignment editor. There are also changes to how you preview questions, set properties, and even save your assignments, all of which contribute to making assignment creation simpler and faster.

Of course, there’s more than just a significantly improved author workflow. Here are some highlights:

• Assignment groups for efficient organization, both in the content repository and on the class homepage.
• Easy-to-create sorting questions – no coding required!
• HTML questions, which can be authored directly in the question designer.
• Clickable image questions are Java-free and easier to author.
• Maximum word counts and other improvements to the essay question type.
• A new scanned document feature lets instructors upload and even grade scanned documents.
• Officially certified LTI integration for connectivity with a wide range of course management systems

See What’s New in Maple T.A. 2016 for more information on these and other new features.

Jonny Zivku
Maplesoft Product Manager, Online Education Products