IMathAS

Current version: 1.7, released March 10, 2009. Change Log. Download from SourceForge.net Logo. Also available through Subversion at Google Code

IMathAS is an Internet Mathematics Assessment System. It is primarily a web-based math assessment tool for delivery and automatic grading of math homework and tests. Questions are algorithmically generated and numerical and math expression answers can be computer graded. Beyond that, IMathAS includes learning management tools, including posting of announcements, text files, and attachments, as well as discussion forums and a full gradebook. In postings and assessments, IMathAS allows accurate display of math and graphs, with simple calculator-style math entry and point-and-click graph creation. It is most similar to (and inspired by) WebWork and WIMS, and similar to commercial and publisher-produced systems like iLrn, MathXL, WebAssign, etc.

IMathAS was written by David Lippman (c) 2006-2009, with with partial support from the WA State E-Learning Council, the Transition Math Project, and Pierce College. It is distributed under the GPL. See the license.txt file distributed with IMathAS for more details and credits for components attributed to others.

Alternate Home

IMathAS's second home, running a more up-to-date demo, can be found at www.imathas.com. A full production installation (also with a demo login available) is at www.wamap.org.

Demo

Log in to IMathAS.

Want to try a demo as a student? Click on the link above and log in as "student" with password "student".

Want to try it out as an instructor? Click on the link above, and Sign up as a new user. You will be granted Limited Course Creator rights. If you want to see your work from a student perspective, log in as "teststudent" with password "password", and enroll the teststudent in your course

Want to try it out with students? I can't do that on SourceForge, but head over to www.imathas.com and request an instructor account to try out the system with your students on a short-term basis. Free hosting for Washington State teachers is available at www.wamap.org.

Question Sets

With permission from the creators of WebWork from the Univ of Rochester, I've begun translating the Univ of Rochester WebWork question library into IMathAS. So far about 1500 question have been translated from the Algebra, Trig, Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, and Sequences and Series sets. Download the WebWork sets. An additional 5000+ questions have been created by users

Support

Looking for Help? Support can now be found at www.imathas.com

New Installers: some example questions are included with the distribution. There are some more questions available by contacting me. Also, since this program is mainly being used in my production server, I would love to know who else is using it and get feedback; please send me an email

Features

IMathAS was built on three primary philosophies:

Core Features include:

Details

For details on how the system works, look over the Help File or view training and support resources.

Why a new system

You may be wondering why another system, when excellent systems already exist.

For my purposes, WebWork and WIMS were too difficult to install (since I don't have direct access to my school's webserver). I didn't want to use commercial or publisher produced systems because I don't want students with used books to incur additional cost.

Installation

  1. Download IMathAS, extract it, and copy the files to your webserver.
  2. If your web host requires that you create databases through the web panel, create a database and database user for IMathAS now. If you have a username/password with database creation priviledges, you can wait and use it later in the install process.
  3. Open a browser and access install.php. This script will write the config.php file, change directory permissions, copy distribution files, and set up the database. At the end of the install you will be given the opportunity to install a small set of example questions.
  4. Log into IMathAS. If you didn't change the initial imathas user settings when running install.php, log in as 'root' with password 'root'. If you did not change the inital imathas user settings, click the "Change Password" link now to change the password to something substantial. Alternatively, you can go into the Admin page, create a new user with Admin rights, then delete the 'root' admin.
  5. Edit loginpage.php and infoheader.php if desired. If you plan to use the new instructor account request page, edit newinstructor.php

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from IMathAS 1.6 or later, access update.php to install any new database changes and learn about any other changes necessary. If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 1.6, you'll need to manually apply changes from the upgrade.txt file.

System Requirements

Versions

PHP 5 and MySQL 4+ are recommended. Most of the system will work with PHP 4.2+ and MySQL 3.23, but future compatibility is not guaranteed.

PHP with GD2 and Treetype are recommended for best image-based graph support

Server Requirements

An installation serving 2500+ students with 80+ concurrent users has operated well on a commercial shared web server.

Security

IMathAS uses a standard databased-stored sessions-based system. If a user does not log out, the session is cleared from database after 24 hours.

Questions (written by teachers) are passed through an interpreter that only allows authorized functions to be used. Student answers are evaluated client-side using JavaScript, and are never evaled server-side.

Macro Libraries (PHP function libraries that can be used in writing questions) can only be installed by full Admins in IMathAS. The option allowing install can be disabled in the config.php file

Install Notes

The install.php script automatically handles the following install steps. They're listed here in case anything goes wrong: