College of Science & Engineering

David McArthur - Technical Learning and Assessment Manager

I am about to start a new role as Technical Learning and Assessment Manager within the School of Maths & Stats at the beginning of August. I have been working in the role of Web Developer for the Statistics Online Distance Learning team for the last 3.5 years, where I have created bespoke software solutions and automation for their needs. I also worked on making their existing coursework as accessible as possible, including extensive R&D and writing my own RMarkdown compiler and LaTeX to accessible HTML implementation.

I have a self-taught background, starting in web design around the millennium dot-com bubble, initially as a designer, but I gradually moved towards the more technical side, first learning the markup languages of the web such as HTML and CSS, then eventually getting to grips with JavaScript. I have been a 'full stack' JavaScript and Node.js developer for about 10 years now.

In a previous role at a web design agency, I was tasked with creating an intranet for Capability Scotland. This project was to be used solely by the patrons of the charity, who have a wide range of disabilities, so accessibility was the top priority. I arranged a focus group with interested patrons and learned about specific problems they had online and what suggestions they had to make things easier and more useful. This turned out to be an eye-opening experience and has influenced all my accessibility work since.

I find it fascinating that there is still so much to be done in making coursework and assessments accessible in the field of Maths and Stats. Mathematical notation and data visualisation are inherently inaccessible to people with visual impairments; they are tools to display complex concepts in a visually simpler way. I hope to explore what can be done for people with visual impairments with the use of exciting new developments from the braille community.

Online assessments using Mathematical notation have until recently been forced to use multiple-choice-style questions, as while there has long been a clear solution to display Maths using TeX, there has been no clear solution allowing students to answer questions using Mathematical notation. The University is now rolling out the STACK question type for Moodle quizzes, which uses the Computer Algebra System Maxima, allowing students to answer questions using Mathematical notation. This allows for partial marks for partially complete answers, and even the opportunity for automated feedback as the student writes the working of their equation. I started collaborating with the STACK team on accessibility issues and hope to continue working with them in my new role.

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First published: 24 May 2023