Abstract:

Distance education posed plethora of challenges, among them how to share documents with students. In the article we present the reader a way how to embed the outputs of a mathematical software Sage Math, into the online repository Moodle. The connection is realized via Sage Cell, which is a web interface for HTML pages. We present a way to directly embed Sage software by modifying the webpage’s HTML code (which is allowed by Moodle). Unfortunately, such a simple approach is impossible for us, and therefore instead we present Moodle’s SageCell plugin.

The Sage is embedded as a list of commands which are then sent to the SageCell’s server, which performs the computations and returns the result so it can be displayed on the page. Hence, to add something to Moodle, we need to include the proper commands to the place where their result would be displayed. We do not have to do anything else and the rest is processed automatically. However, for convenience, we pay a price, and that is that these computations have to be performed for every loading of the page.

In the article, we present the theory together with examples to illustrate how to add different elements to the Moodle. We start with the most basic static elements which can be used, for example, to draw a function or compute a determinant of a matrix. Next, we introduce a way to create a short animation as a sequence of several graphs. This can be done solely with only a few commands, and the result is an animation that is displayed on the web page.

Later, we present a way to add interactive elements to the page via Sage such as input fields, checkboxes, sliders, etc. In this way we can add, for example, a dedicated calculator to a specific place on our webpage. We have to emphasize that Sage software utilizes white spaces to indicate some features, whereas our Moodle erased these redundant white spaces automatically. Hence, we show how we have avoided these problems by also loading the code externally.

Finally, we discuss how to add an element of randomness to the Moodle quiz with the utilization of Sage. We have come up with several options, however there may be other options we have missed.

Keywords:

Moodle, Sage, SageCell, virtual education, undergraduate mathematics.