by Ben Mestel.   Is the latest implementation of STACK able to produce parametrized 3D plots on the fly?  For example, how would one produce a plot of the sphere where  and varies with the question? Many thanks ..read more

by Seigan Hayashi.   Since this post, I have done some additional digging and have found there is a check to ensure the student is allowed to view the question using the "stack_user_can_view_question". However, I am unsure where to go from here ..read more

by Seigan Hayashi.   Hi there! I am attempting to create an online assessment using STACK where students are given random data to download as a CSV file. I used the following link to achieve this. Since the data is large, I am using the file transfer method. However, I am having trouble identifying why the students are unable to download this data. An error message saying "The question is not accessible for the active user" appears when a student attempts to download the file. Trying this myself by switching my role to a student within Learn (Moodle) also produces the same error. However ..read more

by Teemu Kokkonen.   Hi everyone, I use STACK for teaching theory of groundwater flow, including governing equations. I do not quite understand the way how STACK displays derivatives of products. For example, if i want students to express the derivative of a*b with respect to x, i.e. noundiff(a*b,x,1), STACK will display in preview rather than e.g. which I think would be clearer to read. In more complicated expressions the readability can be really challenging. For example,  -noundiff(-K*noundiff(H,x,1)*b,x,1) becomes which is quite hard to interpret. Something like shown below wo ..read more

by Stuart Anderson.   Thank you Tim. RE: "Wanting to stick to the version of Maxima that all our questions were written with (5.41.0) is why we decided to build the docker container ourselves. We will have to upgrade one day, but we will pick our moment for when we do that, and all the testing and question-fixing that might entail." As I've got my head into the Docker scripts today it's starting to make a lot more sense and isn't overly complicated (famous last words). I agree, I'm tempted not to rock the boat with too much change and sticking with 5.41 will make sense to begin with. It ..read more

by Tim Hunt.   A meta-answer to a lot of this is (which you have probably seen me say before): STACK lets you add 'Question tests' to your questions. (Bascially, "Suppose the student intpus this, they should get that mark".) These are the key to being able to update STACK with confidence. If you have tests, you can then make whatever change you want (new STACK version, new Maxima version, goemaxima vs maximapool) on a test server with a copy of all your questions, then use the scripts provided to run all the tests on all the questions. That is really the only way to answer your question ..read more

by Stuart Anderson.   Just noticed in the github respository there is a comment about this (https://github.com/mathinstitut/goemaxima/tree/master/stack) committed 5 days ago: "backport cartesian-product fix for 5.44 maxima version The redifinition of cartesian-product is incompatible with newer maxima versions. Since setting the maxima version to an older version would technically be a breaking change, the fix is backported to all older versions where maxima 5.44 is used instead. The changes should also work with older maxima versions." Can someone reassure me that using 5.44 with ..read more

by Stuart Anderson.   Great thanks, very helpful. So I think that answers my question about what I need to do. For me to have an image which uses STACK question version 4.4.2 and runs with Maxima 5.41.0 (to ensure maximum compatibility with our current question banks), then I'm going to need to build my own docker image as that combination isn't available on docker hub. Best wishes, Stuart ..read more

by Frauke Sprengel.   At the moment, questions using "cartesian product" do not work with STACK and Maxima 5.44. Best wishes Frauke ..read more

by Josh Lim.   Hi Juha Going back to your original post asking about options - you might also consider NUMBAS. This is open source project lets you create write questions (or browse/edit from a large public question bank) - you then download an exam package as a SCORM object activity that you can put into Moodle for students to attempt. Here is a quick comparison compared of NUMBAS to the other built-in Moodle maths Quiz questions and STACK question type. This is off the top of my head (sorry it's not well ordered and it's just an opinion and not definitive/comprehensive by any means (e ..read more