Laboratory of Informatics in Education (LInE)

The Laboratory of Informatics in Education (LInE), hosted on Institute of Mathematics and Statistics - University of São Paulo (IME-USP) is devoted to study the use of Informatics in Education, theory, how to use data to improve the process, the software development and their use in Education. We advocate the privacy right of the students, their data must be kept by their schools/institutions. Free Education, Private Data (FEPD).

What is iAssign

iAssign (interactive Assignments) is a free educational system provided by Laboratory of Informatics in Education (LInE). It is a plugin of Moodle that allow to enrich it with more interactive learning tools, for this reason named interactive Learning Modules (iLM). Bellow we present an image of iAssign, under Moodle 3.6 version, illustrating three situation: the course page with an instance of iAssing activity, a portion of iAssing block of activities, and one of its activity, this one with iGeom as the iLM responsible to increase the learner interactivity with the content (geometry in this case).

The iAssign version on Moodle plugins area is not the current one. Bellow you can find the more recent one.

Fig. 1. An image with 3 of iAssign interfaces, at left most the course with iActivity, the iAssign block of iActivities and the iActivity with the iGeom (iLM to geometry).

Some additional information on iAssign

The project iAssign (Interactive Assignment) was initiated in 2009, when we decided to abandon our Learning Management System in favor of Moodle. The first version of iAssign was released to Moodle 1.9. It was implemented by Patricia Alves Pereira under the supervision of Leônidas de Oliveira Brandão.

iAssign's goal is to increase interactivity in activities related to specific subjects (such as Geometry, Functions, Programming,...) in a flexible way.

In order to improve interactivity, iAssign makes use of iLM (interactive Learning Module), that is any interactive tool that runs under a web browser. They use HTTP protocol to communicate with the Moodle (e.g. to get the teacher activity from the server and to send the student/learner answer to the Web server). Initially, all available iLM were implemented in Java (as "applet"), but the current iAssign version allow to integrate systems encoded under HTML stack (with CSS and JavaScript).

This means that any Web system, in principle, could easily became an iLM and be integrated to Moodle under iAssign package.

If the iLM offers automatic assessment functionality, iAssign is able to deal with it.

By security reason, only the administrator has the privilege of integrating new iLM into iAssign. Once integrated, an iLM can be used by anyone with access to iAssign. For instance, everyone with privileges from teachers on are allowed to use the iAssign authoring tools to create new activities to the students.

The main features of iAssign package are:

1. the authoring tool to allow any teacher to easily prepare activities to students. Activities can be:
   • an exercise (if the iLM has automatic assessment, it is associated with the automatic evaluation);
   • a test (the student does the activity, if iLM has automatic assessment, the student gets immediate feedback, but no data is recorded in Moodle's database);
   • an example (nothing is recorded).
2. reports about students activities:
   • teachers have a survey (and some statistics) about student's answers and can have quick access to any of their answers;
   • teachers also could download a package with all the students answer;
   • the students have a survey of their activities (including their grades).
3. integration with general Moodle grades
4. a filter that allows the insertion of iLM content into HTML text in Moodle.

Besides, as the majority of Moodles' modules, iAssign can export any set of iActivitis (perhaps with other activities).

About the available version of iAssign

There are iAssign available from Moodle 1.9 on. The version allowing the integration of HTML stack packages are those up to version 2.5.00, it is the first version on the "download" area bellow. It came with the folowing iLM writen with HTML stack: iVProg, iFractions and iHanoi.

Download iAssign

Click here to download the latest iAssign package for Moodle 3 (get this if you want to use iLM encoded in HTML stack, as iVProg).
Click here to download the iAssign package for Moodle 3 (previous stable version, do no allow iLM encoded in HTML stack).
Click here to download the iAssign package for Moodle 2.
Click here to download the iAssign package for Moodle 1.

interactive Learning Modules (iLM)

Here are three of our interactive Learning Module:
  iVProg: visual programming [Mid School, High School, Undergraduation] (download iVProg and this set of Web pages).
  iFractions: the interactive game to learn fractions [Fundamental School] (download the current version of iFractions).
  iHanoi: implementation of Towers of Hanoi, versions in JavaScript and Java [Mid School, High School, Undergraduation] (download the JavaScript version of iHanoi).
  iGeom: geometry and related topics, this version in Java (download iGeom).

Demonstration videos

Some videos explaining how iAssign could be used by learners and teachers, its basic functionalities.

Resources for learners
Resources for teacher

Source code

Lets promote free education, private data (FEPD), keep all data from your students private, keep them with free software in your own server!
Here are the source code from our main contributuions to Education:

Source code of iAssign
Source code of the new iVProg (JavaScript)
Source code of iFractions (JavaScript)
Source code of iHanoi (JavaScript)
Source code of the new iGeom (JavaScript)