I see your point. Getting the student to actually construct a matrix with the Matrix command would be easier for someone just learning to use Maple and not aware of the angle bracket notation. What I was trying to get at was that even with the Matrix(); command, at least 1 in 10 people are going to mess up with the syntax - an extra comma accidentally, or one missing bracket - and with the large number of students taking this course in the future, we run the risk of having a lot of remarking to do.

My goal is to get a format that the students can easily enter their answer into once they've done the 'on paper' work. Ideally they shouldn't have to enter a bunch of Maple syntax. For example I created a template with 16 response areas arranged in the shape of a matrix. This works for things like inverses when there is only one corresponding answer, but for something like diagonalization where the order of the vectors can be random and scalar multiples of those vectors are also valid answers, I can't do something like that. 

Mike

Ahh, thanks Robert! Without the abs (I'm working with real eigenvalues) it works just fine!

Cheers,
Mike