AIM documentation

List of courses and web sites using AIM

Try typical examples of AIM questions. More examples ...

Student's comments and reactions about AIM.

Paper: Using Maple and the Web to grade mathematics tests [PS format  - 300K or PDF format - 3.5megs], published in IWALT2000 conference.

Detailed description of question format (for teacher).

Help for students that are using AIM.

About the Alice Project

New! AIM email discussion list for teachers using AIM.

Installation instructions for the old version "aim-plain1" (Maple 5 and 6, Windows 95, 98 and NT, Unix/Linux) :

• under windows
• under unix / linux

Installation instructions for the new version "aim-plain 2.12" (Maple 7 and 8, Windows 98 and NT, Unix/Linux):

• under windows
• under unix/linux

• The use of Maple as the engine for test delivery. This makes it easy to design, display and automatically grade questions with randomisation. A typical example is a question which asks the student to compute a symbolic integral of a randomly chosen product of trigs and exp, then verifies whether their answer is correct through differentiation.
• One can easily include mathematical formulas and Maple graphics generated on the fly.
• Implementation of several automatic methods of giving partial credits, feedback and penalties for wrong answers. These include:
• Hints and subquestions that, if the student decides to views them, generate a penalty.
• Multiple response questions.
• Penalties based on the number of wrong trials.
• Custom grading procedures that can make use of any Maple's functionality.
• Predefined question types include algebraic, matrix, constant, multiple response, multiple choice, string. In addition any Maple type can also be used.
• Grade reporting and monitoring capabilities, including the ability to collect surveys electronically.

Some potential benefits of using AIM:
 

• Reduced workload for teaching assistants by automating the process of grading the homework. Each homework is graded by a computer which also generates a grade report for the whole class.
• Students get immediate feedback: they don't have to wait weeks until their homework is graded to know if they made a mistake. They can correct their mistakes and if they don't know how to proceed, they can view hints.
• The penalty system encourages students to double-check their answers before giving them to the computer.
• Homeworks are customized for each student to prevent cheating. The teacher need only specify a question topic and difficulty level; the system then chooses at random a question of that type from a list of available questions.
• The system uses the Web, and thus all its advantages (such as graphics, java applets etc) can be incorporated into quizzes.
• Administration (modifying questions, getting grade reports, etc) is done through the web-based interface. Thus anyone with the teacher's password can modify quizzes, from any computer connected to the web, without the need to install any additional software.
• The system encourages feedback from the students. This is done through email as well as through customizable evaluation surveys.