3 April 2013: Releasing the power of the web. A completely client-side approach to e-learning and e-assessment in numerate disciplines

Presenters: Christian Perfect (main speaker), Bill Foster and Anthony Youd (Newcastle University, UK)

Hosted by Professor Geoffrey Crisp, Dean Learning and Teaching, RMIT University and Dr Mathew Hillier, Teaching and Educational Development Institute, University of Queensland, Australia starting 07:00AM UST/GMT. Duration 1 hour, 4 minutes.

This webinar introduced Numbas: a new and unique SCORM-2004 compliant open-source and multi-platform e-assessment and e-learning system developed at Newcastle University (UK) that is extensively used there as well at other UK universities. The session covered the unique features of Numbas, the advantages that follow from its design, the rationale for its design along with a comparison with other open-source assessment systems. Plans for the future development of Numbas within a community of users were also explored.
Numbas itself is a free, easy to install, simple to maintain and can be distributed almost immediately across many platforms. Numbas has a growing database of questions and an on-line editor is available. Numbas can be downloaded via the mathcentre http://numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk at the University of Loughborough.
The initial implementation focused on rich formative e-assessment and learning in mathematics, statistics and numeracy at all levels together with appropriate adaptive feedback. Blending powerful mathematical and statistical functionality with its unique browser and client-based design brings into play the full power, capability and resources of the internet (such as integration of Vimeo videos into questions). It builds upon and extends successful designs and implementations used for many years in HE, FE and secondary education (CALM, CALMAT, SCHOLAR) and can be used for many disciplines in education and training.

Further information:

• Numbas homepage http://www.ncl.ac.uk/maths/numbas/
• Numbas editor (to create questions) https://numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk/
• Numbas examples http://mathcentre.ac.uk/search/?q=numbas
• Numbas user guide http://numbas-editor.readthedocs.org/
• Numbas source code (Github) https://github.com/numbas/

Multiple formats are available (the content is the same in each).

Blackboard Collaborate/Elluminate v11 archive version

This uses the classroom system itself to re-play a recording of the event. It provides a higher level of interactivity than the video versions (see below), almost as if you were attending a live event. You are also able to jump forward, back and pause the recording.

• Click: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2013-04-02.2308.M.03FEF4F8B176101CB2546BB8313934.vcr&sid=2009132
• Next: 
  in Firefox/Internet explorer you may be promoted to open with/run or save the file - choose open with/run. 
  in Chrome a prompt will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the window - choose 'keep', then click the file name.
• The Blackboard collaborate player should begin launching via JAVA.

If you are having trouble accessing the classroom system please read the help page.

You Tube version (Flash video)

A screen cast of the session.

Start playing via You Tube (note: this is a single file): http://youtu.be/XnWDWEt1njk (You can choose to view in standard definition or high definition and in full screen mode).

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