=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=MathDox Select: A tool for creating SCORM packages from existing exercises
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-921/mathui-01.pdf
|volume=Vol-921
}}
==MathDox Select: A tool for creating SCORM packages from existing exercises==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-921/mathui-01.pdf
MathDox Select: A tool for creating SCORM
packages from existing exercises
Hans Cuypers Jan Willem Knopper
hansc@win.tue.nl jknopper@win.tue.nl
June 24, 2012
Abstract
Learning Management Systems are often used in e-Learning and e-
Learning content has to be made available for use inside such systems.
This is usually quite easy to do. SCORM is a standard for this. However,
if the content needs to run on a dedicated server, which might be different
from the server running the LMS, this can be complicated. This is for
example the case with interactive mathematical exercises in the MathDox
system.
A tool has been developed to easily create basic SCORM packages
that contain references to MathDox exercises. These packages contain
scripts that communicate results on the exercises between the LMS and
the underlying interactive exercise system (MathDox). In this way we
have created a method for teachers to use MathDox exercises in SCORM
compatible LMS like Moodle, ILIAS, or Blackboard without the need of
a plugin.
As our set up is independent of MathDox, it should be fairly easy to
extend this to other exercise systems or e-learning applications.
1 History
At the Eindhoven University of Technology MathDox has been developed [2,3,7].
This is both a document format and a set of tools to show interactive mathe-
matical documents on the web. The last years MathDox has been extensively
used to create and serve exercises to students [4, 6, 9, 13]. The exercises are
offered through the Learning Management System (LMS) called Moodle [8].
We use a standard for serving e-learning content via an LMS: SCORM [11].
Some editors to create SCORM packages are eXe [5] and RELOAD [10]. How-
ever, the packages created by these tools are not suitable for e-learning content
that, such as MathDox exercises has to run outside the LMS on a remote and
dedicated server.
We have created our own tool, MathDox Select to easily create basic SCORM
packages from a database of MathDox exercises, such that these exercises can
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Figure 1: MathDox exercises running in a SCORM package within Moodle
run on our dedicated MathDox server, while the LMS might be running some-
where else. Our SCORM packages allow us to communicate user information
and scores of exercises to the grade book of the LMS.
Since it is not necessary to install a plugin this means it is possible to add
these packages as a teacher without administrative rights. The tool has been
tested on Moodle and Blackboard.
As our setup is largely independent from MathDox, it can easily be extended
to other types of e-learning content with scoring that one wants to deploy inside
an LMS but has to run on a remote host. Here one can think of exercises from
systems like ActiveMath [1], STACK [12] or WIMS [14].
With exercise systems it is important that the results of the exercises can be
seen by the student and teacher. Exercises systems usually provide their own
interface to results. WIMS and ActiveMath have their own interface, where
you can log in. For teachers it is useful if they can see the results in their own
LMS. Note that STACK has a plugin for Moodle, which is included by default
in newer versions of Moodle. The advantage of our tool is that it only needs
SCORM support to provides access to exercises and stores results.
MathDox Select was formerly called SPG (SCORM package generator) and
earlier versions were written by M. Zubair Afzal and Matthijs Brouwer. This
tool is being developed further for the ONBETWIST project [9]. Recent addi-
tions are support for multiple formats, metadata import, search functionality
on metadata, and support to run exercises from a remote host.
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2 MathDox Select
MathDox Select consists of a database of MathDox exercises (other types of e-
learning content is also allowed), a web based front end to access the database,
and a set of tools to create SCORM packages. Indeed, the front end makes it
easy to select exercises and group them in a package. Such package can then
be downloaded in SCORM format and imported into the LMS. The packages
contain several scripts that make communication between the MathDox server
on which the exercises reside and the LMS possible. In this way user information
about the student available in the LMS is also available to the MathDox server,
and information on the exercises, such as metadata and scores obtained by
students, can be transferred to the LMS.
Inside MathDox Select the packages can be copied, shared with other users
and grouped (to relate them to courses in the LMS).
Figure 2: Selecting exercises and adding them to a package
3 Metadata and searching
The MathDox exercises in our database are XML-documents containing meta-
data based on the LOM-standard. Moreover, these exercises are ordered by a
taxonomy.
The taxonomy is used to present the exercises inside the front end of the
database in a tree structure. The database can also be searched by using the
metadata.
To enable this search, our tool only shows the metadata fields from the
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exercise sources that are actually used. As there are many metadata standards
around, the choice has been made to allow metadata fields of any name and not
just restrict to the metadata standard used within the MathDox exercises. In
this way our front end is aware all possible metadata elements.
Because of this flexibility it is easy to use our tool for other collections e-
learning content with existing metadata in possibly other format or standards.
4 The SCORM package
A SCORM package created by MathDox Select consists of HTML files with
metadata together with some JavaScript files. The HTML files contain an iframe
pointing to the exercises on the MathDox server. Since SCORM uses JavaScript
for communication permission errors can occur when one wants to communicate
between the LMS in which the packages are deployed and the remote server on
which the exercises are running. The HTML5 solution is to use PostMessage to
communicate between iframes. For this we use both JavaScript in the SCORM
package and on a wrapper page on the server. It is easy to modify this JavaScript
for use with exercises of another format.
5 Translation services
Besides the above described features, our tool is enhanced with some extra ser-
vices. If exercises are the MathDox XML-format it is possible to automatically
translate them into another format. An application we offer is conversion to
LATEX.
6 Multiple Formats
The set up of MathDox Select is almost completely independent of the MathDox
system. As a consequence, it is possible to include e-learning content in various
other formats in the database.
A similar approach as we have taken for MathDox exercises could easily
be applied to e-learning content which consist for example of webMathematica
pages, or of interactive exercises in the ActiveMath system or in WIMS.
References
[1] ActiveMath. http://www.activemath.org. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[2] Arjeh Cohen, Hans Cuypers, Jan Willem Knopper, Mark Spanbroek, and
Rikko Verrijzer. MathDox : A system for interactive Mathematics. In
Joseph Luca and Edgar R. Weippl, editors, Proceedings ED-MEDIA 2008
(20th Annual World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and
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Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, June 30-July 4, 2008), pages 5177–
5182, Vienna, Austria, June 2008. AACE.
[3] Hans Cuypers, Jan Willem Knopper, and Hans Sterk. Mess: Exercises in
MathDox. In Electronic Proceedings of JEM meeting, Aachen, 2009, 2009.
Available from World Wide Web: http://www.win.tue.nl/~hansc/mess.
pdf.
[4] Electronisch Verrijkt Onderwijs, TU/e. http://evo01.win.tue.nl/
moodle. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[5] eXe - the eLearning XHTML editor. http://exelearning.org/wiki. Ac-
cessed: 30/05/2012.
[6] Experience Mathness. http://www.wistue.nl. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[7] MathDox. http://www.mathdox.org. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[8] Moodle.org: open-source community-based tools for learning. http://
moodle.org. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[9] Onderwijs verBeteren met WISkunde Toetsen. http://www.onbetwist.
org. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[10] Reusable eLearning Object Authoring & Delivery. http://www.reload.
ac.uk/editor.html. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[11] Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). http://www.
adlnet.gov/capabilities/scorm. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[12] System for Teaching and Assessment using a Computer algebra Kernel.
http://www.stack.bham.ac.uk/. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[13] Technology Enhanced Learning of Mathematics for Master Education.
http://www.telmme.tue.nl. Accessed: 30/05/2012.
[14] WWW Interactive Multipurpose Server. http://wims.unice.fr/wims/.
Accessed: 30/05/2012.
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