With the 2014 Maple T.A. User Summit completed and conference goers have returned to their home cities, it’s time to recap what happened on day 2. We started things off in the morning with an energized presentation by Prof. Jack Weiner of the University of Guelph. Jack pointed out that the University of Guelph has revolutionized their teaching and online homework solutions by using Maple and Maple T.A. He also gave an example of one of this famous Friday Specials – an example of math being used in the real world and discussed other teaching suggestions from his 40+ years of experience in the field.

Carl Hickman, senior developer of Maple T.A., took the stage next to present two very important features in Maple T.A. – adaptive questions and adaptive assignments. Carl covered an overview of each and then proceeded to show several examples related to adaptive questions. He then showed the audience how adaptive assignments can be implemented into an online course using basic branching techniques, advanced algorithms and even item response theory.

After a short break, Prof. Felix Breitenecker, Prof. Andreas Koerner and Stefanie Winkler of the Vienna University of Technology took the stage to discuss how Maple T.A. is used in the mathematical education of engineering students at their school in Austria. They discussed the setup of their courses, their original challenges, how they overcame them in part using custom libraries that they created, and some of their plans for improvements in the future.

Our last presentation was from Prof. Dr. Thomas Schramm of HafenCity Universität Hamburg. His talk covered the nationwide bridge course in mathematics for the preparation of STEM study courses. He discussed the importance of collaboration among universities to present online mathematics material.

To close off the day, Maplesoft hosted a hands on training session that covered several features and topics related to Maple T.A. These included free body diagram questions, sketching questions, rubrics, maple-graded questions, adaptive questions, adaptive assignments, math apps, and more!

The user summit was a huge success! I want to personally thank everyone who had the opportunity to attend this year and to encourage those who couldn’t attend to look for a Maple T.A. event in the future to commit to and experience a conference that will enrich how you use Maple T.A. at your campus.

Jonny
Maplesoft Product Manager, Maple T.A.