Online testing and assessment system gets an update

Maplesoft has announced an update to its testing and assessment tool, Maple TA. Maple TA is a powerful online testing and assessment system designed especially for courses involving mathematics, making it suitable for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. This new version includes a wide range of features and improvements.

The new edition provides enhancements to both questions and assignments. Instructors can now include videos directly inside any type of Maple TA question type, including mathematical free-response, essay, multiple choice, and adaptive questions. Instructors can also require students to upload electronic documents to complete or supplement an assignment, such as digital images of paper-based assessments or rough work done during a test. Other enhancements to questions and assignments include password protection of assignments to provide increased security without increasing logistical overhead in high-stakes testing, and more targeted feedback on multipart questions.

Maple TA 2016.1 also contains a substantial number of enhancements across several areas of the product providing improved efficiency, connectivity, and workflow for instructors and students.  For example, connectivity with course management systems through the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard now includes automatic grade syncing of manually updated grades. Updated results are automatically pushed to the gradebook of the course management system, such as Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, or Brightspace, with no explicit action required on the instructor’s part. For non-English speakers, Maple TA language packs are now available for the first time in Italian, and updates are available for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German,  Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.

Maplesoft also released a new version of the Maple TA MAA Placement Test Suite (PTS), which includes the same enhancements as the Maple TA release. The PTS product offers the renowned placement tests from the Mathematical Association of America in the online testing environment of Maple TA.