IMPROVING MOODLE WITH WIRIS AND M-QIT

Angel Mora, Enrique M

erida and Domingo L

opez

E.T.S.I. Inform

atica, M

alaga University, Spain

Keywords:

Blended Learning, Moodle, Mathematics, Quizzes, Web-tools.

Abstract:

Moodle is one of the most extended LMS. Moodle allows the collaborative learning where students and teach-

ers collaborate on the daily work. But problems with Moodle arise in our scientiﬁc context. Although Moodle

can preview LaTeX code, not all the possibilities of LaTeX are available and it is very good for scientiﬁc

teachers but hard for students, so, the mathematical formulas are usually replaced by non-standard versions

of them written in ASCII. Another problem with Moodle is the difﬁculty of reusing quizzes. We present two

tools that improve Moodle in three aspects: representation of math formulas, mathematical computation, and

improving the learning units for the students. WIRIS is a powerful editor and allows interacting by using

mathematic formulas in an easy way and developing new learning units with mathematical computation via

web; M-QIT is a new tool able to manage and reutilize quizzes and questions available in previous courses in

Moodle.

1 OUR CONTEXT: MOODLE

In order to establish a meeting point for the students

of the subject Numerical Methods of the Engineer-

ing Computer Science School in the University of

alaga, we developed MetNum (Mora, 2006) in the

2003-2004 academic year by using the former plat-

form, existent in our University.

The basic tools we worked with in MetNum were

distribution lists and forums, as a means to encourage

and guide students daily work. In 2004-05 the Uni-

versity of M

alaga choosed Moodle as LMS (Learning

Management System), so MetNum was changed to

Moodle (Dougiamas and Taylor, 2003) and the new

tools provided by this platform have been exhaus-

tively applied. See (Huertas, 2008) for similar experi-

encies.

Moodle (Brandl, 2005) is a free worldwide used

LMS (http://moodle.org), so, since the ﬁrst version

of Moodle, born in August of 2002, until July of

2008, there existed more than 21 millions of regis-

tered users, spread over 46000 places and it is trans-

lated to more than 75 languages.

Some interesting characteristics are available: it

allows managing the identiﬁcation of students and ob-

serving their work, forums, quizzes, questions, glos-

saries, lessons, etc.

We present two tools that improve some problems

found with Moodle: representation of math formulas,

and improving the learning units for the students. For

the ﬁrst aspect we present how to work with WIRIS

and for the second aspect we show M-QIT.

1.1 Representing Mathematical

Knowledge

Problems with Moodle, in this point, arise when we

try to obtain most from it in our mathematical and

scientiﬁc context and speciﬁcally when the teachers

and students want to transmit math knowledge. Im-

proving the process of learning in our framework (a

difﬁcult subject for the students) is essential.

Caprotti et al. remark in (Caprotti, 2008) “math-

emathical instruction is a recognized key asset in our

society and embracing technology in mathematics ed-

ucation is not only economically advantageous but

also promotes better learning and understanding”.

In (Cohen, 2008), Cohen et al. discuss their efforts

to bring mathematics to the Web. For this purpose,

their group “has developed an ensemble of software

tools, MathDox, which is now using within various

(international) projects to produce webbased mathe-

matical material with the potential of having a high

impact in the world of math education”.

Also the authors cite several international projects

which study how to represent mathematical expres-

sions and propose the MathDox player and a set of

Mora Á., Mérida E. and López D. (2010).

IMPROVING MOODLE WITH WIRIS AND M-QIT.

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Software Agents and Internet Computing, pages 75-80

DOI: 10.5220/0002894500750080

 SciTePress

friendly editors.

We would like to emphasize the ability of Moo-

dle to make a direct preview of LaTeX code, which

is usually used to present mathematical material, al-

though not all the possibilities of LaTeX are avail-

able. LaTeX is very good for scientiﬁc teachers but

hard for students, so in forums, etc, mathematical for-

mulas are usually replaced by non-standard versions

of them written in ASCII.

We show in this paper the use of WIRIS, a tool

prepared to be integrated in Moodle, to solve this

communication problem when we need to express

mathematical formulas in the web.

1.2 Creating Material of Evaluation

and Auto-evaluation

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel has con-

cluded that certain tools, in particular systems for au-

tomated testing and assessment, can improve the per-

formance of students.

In this point, we work in two directions to improve

Moodle: creating new learning units that allow math-

ematical computation and an efﬁcient manipulation

of the quizzes of Moodle (new-modify-delete-import-

export operations).

We show how WIRIS is a powerful calculator and

it is possible to create self-evaluation learning units in

Moodle.

And we propose M-QIT to reuse activities and fa-

cilities from some academic years to another one.

Figure 1: Example of method developed using WIRIS.

Thus, the only possibility to reusing them (for ex-

ample quizzes and wikis made in an academic year

are wanted to be used in the next one) is by making

a backup of the course and deleting useless activities

and facilities.

Similar difﬁculties arise when we want to change

or to join activities from different subjects although

they had been made by the same author.

The only possibility is to copy them, one by one,

to a text ﬁle with a determined format (GIFT) and then

modify and copy/paste them to the new subject.

2 WEB TOOLS TO IMPROVE

MOODLE VERSATILITY

In this section, we present the two tools mentioned

earlier, providing an exhaustive description of their

details and the advantages which they proportionate

in our context, and to the Moodle community.

2.1 WIRIS, a Tool for Incorporating

Mathematics

In order to continue with the idea of social construc-

tionist pedagogy, in our subject, materials must repre-

sent mathematical formulas in an easy way (allowing

students to interact easily) and develop new learning

units with mathematical computation via web.

Moodle only works with Maths at the level of rep-

resenting formulas. It uses LateX or MathML to build

math expressions. Moodle visualizes Latex using an

applet.

Designing learning units for mathematics with

real interaction is complicated. Teachers and students

must speak the same language, and Moodle does not

facilitate the communication. Therefore, it is not pos-

sible to use maths in Moodle to interact with the stu-

dents.

In a second stage, if we claim to interact with stu-

dents in an engineer career, the tools to be incorpo-

rated in the learning process must perform real math-

ematical computation and Moodle does not provide

such ability. For us, it was an important goal and we

searched a tool that solved the problem.

We emphasize that the solution is the WIRIS

package (Eixarch, 2002) (http://www.wiris.com/). It

is currently being used with (high) success in educa-

tional. environments in Spain, Luxemburg, Nether-

lands, Puerto Rico and Finland. Nowadays, WIRIS is

a software family of products dedicated to mathemat-

ical calculation.

It allows us to express formulas in an easy way us-

ing a friendly interface and, as educational tool, it can

be used for maths learning. And the most interesting

point, now this tool is integrated in the LMS Moodle

using a WIRIS Plugin.

We have two tools integrated in Moodle:

• WIRIS Editor is a powerful tool used via web, and

permits the graphical edition of mathematical for-

mulas. The editor is based on Java technology

ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

Figure 2: Working with WIRIS.

and therefore compatible with any browser (Ex-

plorer, Mozilla...) and on any platform (Windows,

Linux, Mac). WIRIS Editor supports MathML

and OpenMath standards.

• WIRIS CAS is a Computer Algebra System

(CAS) designed for mathematical computations.

Running in a browser connected to the Inter-

net, the user has access to a powerful calcula-

tor: matrix calculus, integrals, derivatives, plot-

ting graphics in two or three dimensions, etc.

If Moodle integrates the WIRIS Plugin, we can edit

maths expressions and compute an integral in an easy

way.

WIRIS incorporates libraries for Calculus, Alge-

bra, and Statistics but not for numerical methods. A

library incorporating routines of Numerical Methods

has been developed for WIRIS and a collection of in-

teractive problems has been proposed.

Students can interact using WIRIS in Moodle to

check if the result of an exercise is correct and develop

new routines in WIRIS to solve other exercises.

In Fig. 1 an example of the implementation of the

Cholesky method using WIRIS is shown. We have

designed lots of exercises of self-evaluation for the

students (see Fig. 2).

In Moodle, the students found the material orga-

nized by themes and additional tools have been incor-

porated: forums, statistics, notes, calendar, user iden-

tiﬁcation, etc.

WIRIS allows students to interact between them

with a friendly interface. With WIRIS, they have a

powerful tool to work with numerical methods.

Advantages of the new tool for the numerical

methods subject that has been incorporated to Moo-

dle:

• Students can represent mathematical formulas in

a easy way with WIRIS.

• WIRIS allows developing new libraries of nu-

merical methods using an easy programming lan-

guage.

• Students can try to solve self-evaluation exercises,

and have a powerful calculator.

• The only tool necessary is a web browser.

2.2 M-QIT, Moodle Quizzes Revisited

In this section, we present a new tool able to manage

and reutilize quizzes and questions available in previ-

ous courses in Moodle, because managing questions

and quizzes in Moodle is quite complex, mainly when

one wants to re-use questions from previous years.

This application has been named M-QIT (which

stands for Moodle-Quiz Integration Tool) and it is

showed in Fig. 3.

M-QIT has been developed as a web application

because, in this way, it is multi-platform, that is, it can

be correctly viewed and executed in any web browser.

This also allows M-QIT to be executed in a network

environment. It is only necessary to get M-QIT in-

stalled in a web server.

There is no need to install any additional libraries

on computers accessing the server, so all professors

can directly make use of the application.

IMPROVING MOODLE WITH WIRIS AND M-QIT

Figure 3: Main web page of M-QIT.

Since no exclusive or not standardized tools (such

as ﬂash) have been used in the development, no add-

ons to the web browser are necessary for a correct vi-

sual display and usage of the developed tool, keeping

it simple and functional.

M-QIT is an intermediate application in Moodle,

since its purpose is to take information coming from

Moodle and to return it modiﬁed. In order to obtain

questions and quizzes, we make use of the backup

copy that Moodle carries out in XML format.

This ﬁle contains all the necessary data to build

a database with all the necessary information (ques-

tions, answers, quizzes, students, qualiﬁcations, etc.).

Once the database of the application is built, the

most habitual actions to manage and to classify the

information can be carried out. That is, questions and

quizzes can be created, edited and deleted, by using

a more intuitive and ordered environment. The basic

process of the tool consists in:

• Creating a backup copy in Moodle, in ZIP for-

Figure 4: Graphical outline of the process of usage of M-

QIT.

mat, to reduce the ﬁle size, and containing a ﬁle

in XML format.

• Importing the ZIP ﬁle into the application: In this

step, the information contained in the XML ﬁle

becomes part of the application database.

• Managing the information: All the information in

the database, with respect to quizzes and ques-

tions, can be used as desired in the application,

since access to the tables containing questions,

punctuations, answers, etc is facilitated.

• Exporting questions and/or quizzes: Once the in-

formation has been transformed or, simply, loaded

on the database, it is ready to be exported and to

become part of questions stored in Moodle again.

The GIFT format is chosen as export format, since

it is the one that allows exporting a greater num-

ber of types of questions, while other format do

not allow them.

Figure 5: Statistics.

ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

• Importation by Moodle: In the previous export

phase, a text ﬁle is created in GIFT format, which

can be imported by Moodle.

In Fig. 4, we show the import-export process and

the communication with Moddle. The usage of M-

QIT begins with the creation of a user. In addition,

each user is subscribed to a series of courses which

can edit, as well as its quizzes and questions. None

of the users can display or edit questions or quizzes

associated to courses to which he is not subscribed.

Together with the listing of questions, many op-

tions are also allowed, for the management of the

questions:

• To delete: it deletes a question and its answers.

• To edit: it edits the selected question. Besides be-

ing able to modify the question, you can create a

copy of the question.

• Answers: It allows modifying answers to the cor-

responding question. The edition of the answers

will change in function of the question type.

• To export: This option allows exporting a question

to be able to be used in Moodle. The export is car-

ried out in GIFT format. Moodle does not allow

some types of questions to be exported, and M-

QIT will not be able to do so. The types of ques-

tions that cannot be exported are ”Calculated” and

”Multianswer”.

• Statistics (see Fig. 5): Statistics make sense

and have importance for past courses in Moodle,

since statistics pick up information on the answers

given by the students in the course carried out in

Moodle. The information that can be found is:

– Question qualiﬁcations are shown graphically

and numerically. This allows knowing the num-

ber of students who obtained a certain qualiﬁ-

cation for this question.

– Quizzes in which the question appears.

– Answers given by students and number of stu-

dents for each answer.

M-QIT allow us to manage groups of questions:

• To add marked to quiz: It allows adding the se-

lected questions to a quiz. First, selecting the

questions to be added, and later, choose the quiz.

• To delete marked: It is a quick way to delete sev-

eral questions at the same time.

• To edit marked: It allows editing several questions

at the same time.

Quizzes in our application are a bit different from

Moodle quizzes. In Moodle, quizzes allow many op-

tions, since students carry out these quizzes. And, one

can choose the number of attempts that can be made,

the duration, the date in which the quiz is published

to the students, etc.

However, in our manager, a quiz is simply a col-

lection of questions, since quizzes organized in our

manager are not answered on it, but they should be

exported to Moodle to be able to be carried out.

In M-QIT, quizzes can be displayed from the

courses in which the user is inscribed. When list-

ing questions of the selected quiz (see refﬁg:ﬁgure6),

there appear several:

• Quiz statistics: It shows statistical information re-

lated to the quiz. To be able to have this informa-

tion, the quiz has had to be answered previously

in Moodle by the students.

• To export selected: Same operation that in the op-

tion to export a single question, but for a group of

chosen questions.

• To export and delete quizzes.

• To edit quiz and make a copy of the quiz.

We must note that question deletion only affects to

the current quiz. If a question appears in two quizzes,

when deleting this question in one of them, the ques-

tion continues appearing in the other quiz.

In addition, M-QIT has a search engine. It is the

quickest form of searching a question or a quiz. The

search engine searches among question names and

text, and among quiz names.

3 CONCLUSIONS

In this work we have presented two new tools, which

improve the functionalities of Moodle.

First, the WIRIS package has been integrated into

Moodle by means of a plugin, allowing the easy rep-

resentation of math formulas, and providing the real

mathematical computation needed in a virtual subject

of an Engineering course.

WIRIS only provided a complete set of routines

for ﬁelds such as Calculus, Algebra and Statistics, and

then we developed the necessary routines for our sub-

ject, Numerical Methods, implemented in the easy-to-

use WIRIS programming language.

Furthermore, students have now the possibility

to perform self-evaluation exercises with the help of

the multi-platform powerful calculator WIRIS CAS,

a computation module inside the WIRIS package,

which can be accessed via a new web portal, designed

to be students meeting point and workplace.

Second, the M-QIT tool has been developed in

order to make easier and more functional the man-

IMPROVING MOODLE WITH WIRIS AND M-QIT

Figure 6: List of quizzes.

agement of Moodle quizzes and questions. In ba-

sic Moodle, this management is not oriented to the

re-utilization of quizzes from past courses, and the

only possibility for teachers is to import a complete

backup of the corresponding past virtual course, and

then deleting those quizzes and questions not interest-

ing for the current one.

The integration of this tool as a standard Moodle

module is one of our interests for future works. Also,

an extension of M-QIT not only for quizzes and ques-

tions, but to glossaries, forums, and other Moodle ac-

tivities is planned.

Regarding WIRIS, we will focus on providing

new packages corresponding to other mathematical

areas, such as Discrete Maths and Optimization.

REFERENCES

Brandl, K. (2005). Are you ready to moodle? Language

Learning and Technology, 9(2):16–23.

Caprotti, O, S. M. P.-M. (2008). Webalt online courses and

joining educational mathematics network. ICTCM.

Cohen, A.M., C. H. S.-H. (2008). Towards mathematics

on the web. CiteSeerX - Scientiﬁc Literature Digital

Library and Search Engine.

Dougiamas, M. and Taylor, P. C. (2003). Moodle: Using

learning communities to create an open source course

management system. Proceedings of EDMEDIA.

Eixarch, R., M. D. X. D. S. (2002). Wiris: an internet plat-

form for the teaching and learning of mathematics in

large educational communities. Contributions to Sci-

ence, 2(2):269–273.

Huertas, J.A., S. C. C. C. S. C. (2008). Mathematical

e-learning: state of the art and experiences at the

open university of catalonia. International Journal of

Mathematical Education in Science and Technology,

4:455–471.

Mora, A; M

erida, E. L. D. (2006). Development of a

virtual learning community for the subject numeri-

cal methods under moodle. Current Developments in

Technology-Assisted Education, 4:361–368.

Posea, V., M. D. T.-M. S. C. V. and Gartner, A. (2006).

Evaluation of virtual learning environments using logs

and social networks. Proceedings of EC-TEL, 4:362–

368.

Sancho, T., M. R. (2007). A virtual mathematics learning

environment for engineering students. Interactive Ed-

ucational Multimedia, 14:1–18.

ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems