"Interactive PastPapers" reviewed
Review by Don Kite, a Secondary Schools Maths Teacher.
Followed by a response from the authors.
PC CD-ROM, developed by the CALM Team,
Department of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University.
Published by Lander Software, RRP £39.99.
My Sixth Form son loaded up the program, designed for use at A-level and Scottish Higher, suggesting that the user guide for this part is clear and accurate. Being less computer literate, I found understanding the full scope of the teacher options rather difficult.
I do feel that the program is ambitious and could be very useful. We could not at our school use the program to its full potential, having only one PC. However, it still could be used usefully to allow our Sixth Form (and some earlier years) students to consolidate or revise particular topics or indeed test whole areas of work.
As far as teachers are concerned, if the program could allow a test to be set up then sent to the printer to be used in the traditional way, this would be an extremely useful facility. I appreciate that the program has much more to offer than this but in our situation, to be able to set tests (and also different versions of the same test), could save much teacher time.
At first I thought the program had an immense bank of A-level questions (I only concerned myself with the A Level option). As I got more familiar with it I realised the scope was limited, i.e. 70 questions in all but with number variations. This means that a question, say about perpendicular lines, is always asked in the same way and the student is not getting enough variety. I would like to see a much enlarged bank of questions.
Read Authors' Response below for their replies to the above points.
Here are some other questions I asked the developers, with their answers:
The program allowed very complex answers: At one stage I got 2/3 of a mark but when I revealed the rest of the
answer lost the marks I had already scored.
On a question I answered finding the acute angle between lines, I got
the correct angle but felt the advice was rather inaccurate - to
practise finding angles between lines.
On the Saved Test Summary Report the numbers are not spaced correctly
under the titles.
Is it possible to enlarge the program screen to fill my computer
screen?
[Back to the review's "other questions".]
Thanks for your comments on Interactive PastPapers. Following them
in order, here is our response:
First of all we are pleased that you found the loading of the program
relatively easy. We believe the Teacher Options are quite
straightforward too and refer you to the Interactive PastPapers Manual
for further details.
However, let us repeat some of the instructions as they relate to
your comments. For example, you say it would be useful to have paper
versions of the questions. The software was not designed for this
purpose but realising the usefulness of this feature here are
instructions on how to do this:
There are we believe 80 questions. The program is only attempting to
cover core A-level and so is likely to be limited in some sense. We
take your point on variety. As the years roll by we hope to extend the
bank of questions and so counter the criticism you have of our initial
program.
We would add that Interactive PastPapers is the
first program that attempts to take students' answers in free form and
mark them electronically. Any other products on the market use
multiple choice options only or a range of numerical answers. Our
program does have in addition plenty of randomisation and this gives
users much worthwhile practice.
We certainly hope you will be able to make use of the program for
your pupils. We believe it would sharpen up their response to a range of
questions. Our new product Interactive PastPapers for GCSE
Mathematics, contains over 120 questions taken from 25 topic areas
and, with its use of random parameters, again provides much practice for
the user.
e.g. d/dx ((4x^3+x^2+x+2)/x^2) was accepted as
(x^2(12x^2+2x+1)-2x(4x^3+x^2+x+2))/x^4
The inputting must be extremely clever, but does the student need to be
encouraged to simplify?
We are proud of the fact that our marking system does allow for
students to give mathematically equivalent correct answers and receive
full marks. The answer you quote is one such example. It would have
been possible to stop the alternative input you suggest by limiting our
correct answer to a maximum number of characters, though this can
sometimes be impractical when randomisation is used in a question. One
of the strengths of our program is its ability to let students input
answers in alternative mathematical forms as long as their answers are
correct and so build up confidence. It remains the job of the human
teacher to explain that some answers are more compact and therefore
better.
This is a misunderstanding --- since it was a linked answer we had
awarded some marks. Had you simply ended the question you would have
gained the marks the program had recorded for you. But when you chose to
reveal you forfeited those marks.
It is difficult you would admit giving blanket advice to a range of
situations. This is why we have given the teacher the ability to change
the advice given to suit their needs. The manual or on-line help
describes how easy it is to change the advice given to badly answered
questions.
The reason for this is that you are reading a file where the
information is tab separated. We suggest that you import the results
into a standard spreadsheet program. This will make the saved files more
readable and you can use the power of the spreadsheet to gather more
useful information about students' files.
This feature is highlighted in the manual. The program uses a
standard 640x480 screen to allow users with less up-to-date monitors to
run the program.
Authors' Response
