Excel for generating class exercises

Hi,

Let's suppose we have an Excel sheet that solves a math problem from a set of input values that you type in the proper cells.

Now let's suppose we have 100 students, and we want to generate (and solve) that math problem with different random input values for each student. We would need to print each student input values and solution in a different page, so that we can give each student a page with the input values, and a page with the solution.

What would be the best approach to do this? I've never used templates nor programming in Excel, so I'd like to know which path would you recommend to do this in the most efficient way as possible.

Thanks in advance,

You need to use the RANDBETWEEN function to generate the values (unless you actually want the students to type in the values! That could take ages, and I'm a teacher, I know!). Output this to the math function, for example, AVERAGE. Then I'd create small blocks of cells where each range of values is generated or inputted.

Is this what you want?

Schallpattern

Originally Posted by schallpattern

You need to use the RANDBETWEEN function to generate the values (unless you actually want the students to type in the values! That could take ages, and I'm a teacher, I know!). Output this to the math function, for example, AVERAGE. Then I'd create small blocks of cells where each range of values is generated or inputted.

Is this what you want?

Schallpattern

Well, the problem is not generating the random numbers. The problem is exercises are quite long, so putting all students in the same sheet can perhaps be excessive, and my idea was to have each student in a different sheet.

Is there some way of telling Excel to generate a sheet B that is a copy of sheet A except for some cells (the input values) ?

I don't have much time for digging into programming, so perhaps somebody has already written some script for doing this?

Or maybe putting all students in the same sheet is best? (in such case I'm afraid the sheet can become really _huge_ because the problem can take several DIN A4 to be solved, so multiply that by 100 students, and imagine it in a single sheet...

Thanks a lot,

Originally Posted by shg

What's the nature of the math problem?

Do you mean the type of exercise? Well, they're Physics exercises (forces, moments, mechanical equilibrium, etc). The Excel sheets for each exercise is already developed.

The cells for input data are clearly identified, and I wish to choose the best approach for generating a different exercise for each student. I also have an Excel sheet with the names of all the students... maybe there's some automatic way of generating a sheet with different input data for each student name in such list? Well, I never did programming in Excel, so I don't know what would be best.