# How to keep track of your old exercises in a heavy proof based course?

In a typical course (proof-based, for the context of this question) I have about 50 exercises that I might want to use when I teach the course again. Each exercise might be used in the same way as before, or perhaps in a modified form (for difficulty or dependence on course material/pacing). Sometimes, I might even have exercises that are based on old ones, so I must not forget to include the prerequisite exercises earlier if I want to assign the later ones.

What is a good method to keep track of old exercises?

Ideally, a good method should allow one to:

• easily store exercises to be recycled later (even perhaps in a different course),
• search for exercises related to a certain topic,
• search for exercise that make use of a certain technique or idea,
• keep track of any dependencies,
• make note of difficulty levels

and perhaps more.

Do you have any methods that have proven effective at addressing these goals, or others? Is there software that would aid such a task?

• I hope the question is on-topic. In order to make it not too broad, I have specified on proof based classes with about 50 exercises per course. A similar question for courses with a lot of small exercises would be interesting as well. – Markus Klein Apr 2 '14 at 19:07
• I like the question and consider it very much on-topic. I fleshed out the question by adding the list of ideal benefits of such a method, and added the "technology-in-education" tag because (I'm hoping) a great answer to this question will point us to some software to help with this task. – Brendan W. Sullivan Apr 2 '14 at 19:19

• This sounds like a job for \input and not for newcommand, though. – Wrzlprmft Apr 4 '14 at 14:43
• I'm using the answers package to write the question and the answer to it as a solution environment. This keeps them textually together in the source, while allowing to separate questions and answers when typesetting. – vonbrand Apr 6 '14 at 2:42