Development of a generator of practical tasks in higher mathematics using the Microsoft Office suite and LaTeX digital typesetting system

Abstract

Successful teaching of mathematics to students is impossible without their independent fulfillment of practical assignments. The preparation of a set of individual assignments in traditional ways requires a large amount of time and effort from the teacher. At the moment, there are various assignment generators, mainly representing ready-made software products. In this article, we propose a different approach, that does not require the teacher to know special programming languages. To create our simple generator of test and practical assignments in mathematics for distance learning systems, such as Moodle, and electronic educational resources, in general, knowledge of the widespread Microsoft Office office suite is enough. It is known, that the preparation of individual sets of assignments (variants of a typical calculation or CGW) in mathematics is associated with the need to set a large number of formulas, which is quite laborious. This problem can be solved by using the TeX (or LaTeX) digital typesetting system, as well as office suite features such as random number generation, branching using the "IF" function of Excel and a tool for a set of output documents (individual calculation options) using the merge tool in Word