Automating coursework in Word, LaTeX and RMarkdown
Mathematics students at Middlesex University are assessed primarily
through coursework following a radical redesign of the programmes that
removed all exams. From 2019 the Middlesex Mathematics team aimed to
give students greater opportunity for assessment using authentic problems and real-life data of the kind they would encounter in their mathematical careers. Coursework problems now include extended calculus calculations from real-life scenarios, unfamiliar proofs in analysis, and applying and interpreting statistical techniques to publicly available data-sets.
In this new model all summative assessment is unsupervised so the risk
of plagiarism is more significant. To mitigate against this and encourage
engagement the Middlesex maths team use a variety of methods to
generate bespoke coursework and solutions for individual students.
In this talk we detail our approach to coursework generation using
Microsoft Word, LaTeX, and the R programming language, each suitable
for staff at different levels of technical confidence. After looking at the
abilities and learning curves of mail-merges and the pgfplots LaTeX
package we will advocate for novices to adopt Rmarkdown or Quarto to
produce generated assignments of their own. We will also provide
templates for attendees to replicate our approach.
Finally, we discuss the viability of generated coursework in the age of
ubiquitous Ai. Although generated coursework can discourage student
copying, it is formulaic so is perhaps necessarily vulnerable to Large
Language Models such as ChatGPT. We suggest some principles for
bespoke coursework for the next academic year.
Slides
Word Mailmerge
Template:
Python + LaTeX
Template:
RMarkdown
Template: