New version of online assessment tool Maple T.A.

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Maplesoft, a leader in software products for technical education and research, announced today the release of the latest version of its popular testing and assessment tool, Maple T.A..  Maple T.A. is a powerful online testing and assessment system designed especially for courses involving mathematics, making it ideal for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. Maple T.A. 2016 provides major enhancements for content authors, making it faster and easier to create and modify questions and assignments.

After extensive consultations with customers, the basic authoring workflow has been completely redesigned to make it easier to create content. As a result, the process of authoring new questions and assignments is more intuitive and flexible, and the learning curve to become a productive author is greatly reduced. In addition, several types of questions, including sorting, clickable image, and interactive Math App, are now much easier to create. As well, authors can now apply a consistent style and appearance to all their questions, without having to modify each individual question.

Other enhancements to Maple T.A. 2016 include a redesigned content repository, making it substantially easier for educators to manage their collection of Maple T.A. questions and assignments, and to search for content, both locally and from the Maple T.A. Cloud. Maple T.A. 2016 also provides the ability for instructors to upload and grade scanned documents, the ability for authors to develop questions in HTML5, and enhancements to essay questions. As well, Maple T.A. 2016 includes officially certified Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) connectivity tools that can be used to integrate Maple T.A. with many course management systems, including Canvas, Brightspace, Sakai, Blackboard, and Moodle.

“Maple T.A. offers institutions a valuable tool that allows educators to truly assess their students’ understanding of STEM courses in ways no other system can, while working within the framework of their existing course management technologies,” says Paul DeMarco, Director of Development for Maple and Maple T.A. “The enhanced authoring environment of Maple T.A. 2016 provides educators more flexibility and control of their testing content, whether they want to assemble assignments using questions contributed by instructors from the Maple T.A. user community, or create new questions using step-by-step authoring tools. Feedback from our customers helped us streamline the user experience, and we are grateful to our passionate users who contribute to Maple T.A.’s success.”

In a few weeks, Maplesoft will also be releasing a new version of the Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite (PTS), which offers the renowned placement tests from the Mathematical Association of America in the online testing environment of Maple T.A.  Based on Maple T.A. 2016, the latest release of PTS will offer the streamlined content management, LTI connectivity, and other new features of Maple T.A.

Maple T.A. 2016 is available as both a Maplesoft-hosted or school-hosted solution. Interface translations are available for French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and more.