Introduction

These pages present the description language proposed at the MKM Symposium in Aug 2003 (see publications). A version of this format is currently used for the WALLIS project of the University of Edinburgh. Similar ideas are used in the representation of the exercises in ActiveMath. For lack of a better name, it is simply called ExerciseML.

Currently, you can only find some examples that demonstrate the capabilities of the format but more detailed documentation will soon appear (time and money permitting)

The rational behind these examples is to motivate discussions with other interested parties in order to reach a common structure that would, at least, permit transformations from one format to the other (for instance QTI, possible educational modules of OMDoc, and other similar ones) without loss of functionality.

Time-permitting, an effort will be made to use QTI's extension mechanism for representing the same activities. Hopefully when that time comes QTI v2 will have most aspects incorprorated and trasnformation will be possible. Currently such a transformation is not possible as QTI does not support feedback and hint adaptation, neither allows whole new items as hints or solutions let alone the fact that it is difficult to have exercises with mathematical expressions and input.

The JISC-funded "Serving Maths" project is currently looking into specifying a format similar to this as an extension of QTI.