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To start with, I'm not sure whether this is the correct stackexchange site to ask this, but I can't find one for physics teachers and my problem could easily be extended to math teachers with the same problem.

I'm working for my university's physics department. They're looking for some software or tool that allows teachers to generate physics problems by plugging in values to predefined variables and generating different exercises based on that (as in, having an exercise archetype and generating different exercises by changing the values of these variables), then sending a different exercise to each student in the course, have them answer them, and then comparing those answers with the real values, taking into account errors (admitting a 1-2% error, for example)

Does such a tool exist? Thanks in advance.

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    $\begingroup$ I suggest looking into WeBWorK. Search for "webwork physics." $\endgroup$
    – user52817
    Aug 13, 2019 at 15:48

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There are many such programs, but I highly recommend WeBWorK. The founders received the American Mathematical Society award for impact on teaching math in 2016, it is used at hundreds of institutions (primarily in the United States, but I believe not exclusively at all) and is open source. You can (I think still) pay for hosting or set it up locally, which I think is what most places do. I believe you can try it out with a few sample logins at the MAA instance.

Although the user interface is a bit retro, it is still actively developed and I have had only very rare complaints from students about it. Currently, you can even like the green bar you get when your answers are correct on Facebook. You will want to keep the problem library up to date. There are even contributed physics problems though I'm not sure how integrated these are in the problem library. I am quite sure that the developers would welcome a strong set of physics problems, and of course there are many rote physics questions of the type you are talking about that are essentially algebra or calculus dressed up in physics garb (not that I am claiming that is what physics "really is"!). Good luck!

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    $\begingroup$ To write your own problems for WeBWorK, you need to know at least a bit of LaTeX. While essentially all mathematicians already know LaTeX, I would guess that is far from true for physicists. And perhaps even less true for the computer support guys in physics departments. On the other hand, if your mathematics department is already using WeBWorK, it should be possible to arrange to add physics using the same server. $\endgroup$
    – Gerald Edgar
    Aug 13, 2019 at 21:39
  • $\begingroup$ Depending on how you want to write the problems, yes, though I would argue it would be possible to write bad-looking problems without it, and I think most physics folks at universities use LaTeX syntax for their equations (it's even becoming standard in fields like linguistics to some extent). The real problem is the pg language that one needs to write WW problems - one reason the WW people have offered workshops on writing problems! $\endgroup$
    – kcrisman
    Aug 14, 2019 at 13:11
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    $\begingroup$ But yes, if there is already a server, it's nearly trivial to set up new "courses" on the same server. $\endgroup$
    – kcrisman
    Aug 14, 2019 at 13:11

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