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. 10 incorporates customer feedback from students, instructors, and administrators to provide increased scope, usability, and flexibility for testing and assessment in an online environment.
With Maple T.A. 10, all Maple T.A. functionality is now accessible via standard web browsers on computers and tablets, including iPad, Android tablets, and more. All math-based features are fully supported on iPads, including standard math notation in questions and responses, as well as the full range of visualisation options.
Maple T.A. 10 includes new questions types for technical assessment. With the new sketch question, instructors can ask students to sketch graphs, and Maple T.A. grades those graphs automatically. For instructors in engineering and science, Maple T.A. can now ask questions that require students to draw free body diagrams, and Maple T.A. will grade the result. In addition, the Math App question type, first introduced as a technology preview, is now fully supported. With gradeable Math Apps, instructors can provide students with specialised calculators, ask them to manipulate parameters until they have found the desired solution, give them interactive plots to explore, and much more.
Other enhancements include a completely redesigned interface that incorporates customer feedback from both instructors and students to create a more streamlined workflow; a new equation editor that eliminates the need for browser plug-ins; updates to the connectivity features that allow Maple T.A. to be seamlessly integrated into course management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Brightspace by D2L; and more options for customising the Maple T.A. interface.
‘Maple T.A. 10 is an important step forward for STEM assessment,’ says Paul DeMarco, Director of Development for Maple and Maple T.A. ‘From mobile support for tablets to new question types for math, science, and engineering, to a streamlined, customisable interface, Maple T.A. 10 offers students, instructors, and administrators a powerful environment for testing and assessment that can be integrated into any online course or learning management infrastructure.’
Based on Maple T.A. 10, Maplesoft will shortly be releasing a new version of the Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite, which offers the renowned placement tests from the Mathematical Association of America in the online testing environment of Maple T.A. The latest release takes advantage of the streamlined interface and other new features of Maple T.A. 10, and also includes new testing content to determine if students understand the concepts needs for success in their algebra and precalculus courses.
Maple T.A. 10 is available as both a Maplesoft-hosted or school-hosted solution. Interface translations are available for French, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and more.
