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Create a Custom Task
Create a Custom Task

How to create and assign a custom task from anywhere in Mathspace

Ernest Tan avatar
Written by Ernest Tan
Updated over a week ago

To create a custom task, click the Create a Task From Anywhere button, and then select "Custom Task".

In a custom task, you have the freedom to choose exactly which questions to assign to your students, and you can choose from all the Mathspace textbooks available to your school. Every student assigned a custom task will see the same questions in the same order, other variations due to number randomization.

Building your task

Use the two drop-down menus to choose a textbook and a subtopic to select questions from.

  1. Select a textbook from the list of textbooks available to your school. You can change this textbook at any time when creating your task without losing the questions you have chosen already.
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  2. Select a subtopic from the chosen textbook. You can also change this subtopic at any time when creating your task without losing the questions you have chosen already.
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  3. The arrow to the left of each question allow you to preview the whole question, including whether or not it has multiple parts.
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    You can also see the estimated difficulty level (Easy, Medium or Hard) and an estimated length of time each question should take, Click the ... to try the question yourself.
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  4. Use the + symbol to the right of each question to add it to your task. The circle will turn dark blue when the question has been added to your task. To add multiple copies of the same question, just click the + multiple times.
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  5. See how many questions have been added to your task, and the approximate length of time the task is expected to take. Click this button to preview the task. From the task preview, you can re-arrange, remove or duplicate questions.

Once you are satisfied with your task, click continue to set the details of the task before assigning. If you need to leave the task and come back to it later before assigning it, the questions in your task will be automatically saved for you to come back to. You'll see a small number representing the number of questions in the task, as well as the estimated completion time on the Create a Task From Anywhere button

Finalizing your task

As with any Mathspace task, you can assign a custom task to an entire class (allowing you to deselect students from a class), an individual student, or some combination of classes and students.

If you would like to be able to easily reuse your task at a later date, save it as a Task Template. For more information about task templates, check out our article on task templates.

A few notes on the Advanced Options in a custom task

  • The extension days allow students to continue to work on a custom task after the due date. Once the extension days have passed, students will be unable work on a task, though they can still see their results.

  • If you want to make your task more summative, you can turn off the Mathspace provided help options. Note that students will still be able to skip steps, and will still receive feedback on every step of work they do.

  • With our built-in number randomisation, you can ensure that every student will see different variations of the same questions. This is great for restricting the ability of students to cheat. On the other hand, if you want to complete a task together as a class, set the numbers to be the same for all.

When you're done, just click "Create Task" and the task will be generated for your students.

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