exams2testvision: Generation of Exams in TestVision Format

In exams: Automatic Generation of Exams in R

Generation of Exams in TestVision Format

Description

Automatic generation of exams in TestVision format (still under development) for the online testing system TestVision Online.

Usage

  exams2testvision(file, n = 1L, nsamp = NULL, dir = ".",
    name = NULL, quiet = TRUE, edir = NULL,
    tdir = NULL, sdir = NULL, verbose = FALSE,
    resolution = 100, width = 4, height = 4, svg = FALSE,
    encoding = "UTF-8", num = NULL, mchoice = NULL,
    schoice = mchoice, string = NULL, cloze = NULL,
    template = "testvision",
    stitle = "Exercise", ititle = "Question",
    adescription = "Please solve the following exercises.",
    sdescription = "Please answer the following question.",
    maxattempts = 1, solutionswitch = TRUE, zip = TRUE, points = NULL,
    eval = list(partial = TRUE, negative = FALSE), converter = "pandoc",
    base64 = FALSE, mode = "hex", ...)

  make_itembody_testvision(shuffle = FALSE, defaultval = NULL,
    minvalue = NULL, maxvalue = NULL,
    enumerate = TRUE, digits = NULL,
    tolerance = is.null(digits), maxchars = 12,
    eval = list(partial = TRUE, negative = FALSE), solutionswitch = TRUE)

Arguments

file	character. A specification of a (list of) exercise files.
n	integer. The number of copies to be compiled from file.
nsamp	integer. The number(s) of exercise files sampled from each list element of file. Sampling without replacement is used if possible. (Only if some element of nsamp is larger than the length of the corresponding element in file, sampling with replacement is used.)
dir	character. The default is the current working directory.
name	character. A name prefix for resulting exercises and ZIP file.
quiet	logical. Should output be suppressed when calling xweave?
edir	character specifying the path of the directory (along with its sub-directories) in which the files in file are stored (see also xexams).
tdir	character specifying a temporary directory, by default this is chosen via tempfile. Note that this is cleaned up (i.e., existing files are deleted) and only certain temporary files are preserved.
sdir	character specifying a directory for storing supplements, by default this is chosen via tempfile.
verbose	logical. Should information on progress of exam generation be reported?
resolution, width, height	numeric. Options for rendering PNG graphics passed to xweave.
svg	logical. Should graphics be rendered in SVG or PNG (default)?
encoding	character, ignored. The encoding is always assumed to be UTF-8.
num	function or named list applied to numerical (i.e., type num) questions. If num is a function, num will be used for generating the item body of the question, see function make_itembody_testvision(). If num is a named list, these arguments will be passed to function make_itembody_testvision().
mchoice, schoice, string, cloze	function or named list applied to multiple choice, single choice, string, and cloze questions (i.e., type mchoice, schoice, string, and cloze), respectively. See argument num for more details.
template	character. The IMS QTI 1.2 or 2.1 template that should be used. Currently, the package provides "testvision.xml".
stitle	character. A title that should be used for the sections. May be a vector of length 1 to use the same title for each section, or a vector containing different section titles.
ititle	character. A title that should be used for the assessment items. May be a vector of length 1 to use the same title for each item, or a vector containing different item titles. Note that the maximum of different item titles is the number of sections/questions that are used for the exam.
adescription	character. Description (of length 1) for the overall assessment (i.e., exam).
sdescription	character. Vector of descriptions for each section, omitted if empty (or NULL or FALSE).
maxattempts	integer. The maximum attempts for one question, may also be set to Inf.
solutionswitch	logical. Should the question/item solutionswitch be enabled?
zip	logical. Should the resulting XML file (plus supplements) be zipped?
points	integer. How many points should be assigned to each exercise? Note that this argument overules any exercise points that are provided within an "\expoints{}" tag in the .Rnw file. The vector of points supplied is expanded to the number of exercises in the exam.
eval	named list, specifies the settings for the evaluation policy, see function exams_eval.
base64	logical. Should supplementary files be embedded using Base 64 coding? Argument base64 may also be a character vector of file suffixes that should be encoded, e.g. base64 = c("png", "rda") will only encode PNG images and binary .rda files. If set to NULL only image files will be encoded.
converter	character. Argument passed on to make_exercise_transform_html. The default for converter is set to "pandoc" unless "ttm" is required. The default works best in TestVision.
mode	character. See function tth.
shuffle, defaultval, minvalue, maxvalue	arguments used for IMS QTI 2.1 item construction, for details see the XML specification (see IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 2012), especially Section 4.
enumerate	logical. Insert potential solutions in enumerated list?
digits	integer. How many digits should be used for num exercises?
tolerance	logical. Should tolerance intervals be used for checking if the supplied num answer/number is correct? The default is to use tolerance intervals if digits = NULL.
maxchars	numeric. Lower bound for the number of characters in fill-in-blank fields. The actual number of characters is selected as the maximum number of characters of this value and the actual solution.
...	further arguments passed on to make_exercise_transform_html.

Details

TestVision employs an XML format that essentially uses the Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) standard, version 2.1, see IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. (2012). However, as this deviates from the plain QTI 2.1 standard in several places, the exams2qti21 cannot be used directly. Instead, exams2testvision is a new interface that is likely to be improved in future versions.

exams2testvision produces a .zip file that may be uploaded into TestVision. This includes the final XML file of the exam/assessment as well as possible supplement folders that include images, data sets etc. used for the exam.

exams2testvision proceeds by (1) calling xweave on each exercise, (2) reading the resulting LaTeX code, (3) transforming the LaTeX code to HTML, and (4) embedding the HTML code in a XML file using TestVision's QTI standards for assessments and question items. For steps (1) and (2) the standard drivers in xexams are used. In step (3), a suitable transformation function is set up on the fly using make_exercise_transform_html, see also the details section in exams2html. For step (4), the function will cycle through all questions and exams to generate the final XML file in the TestVision QTI standard. The questions appear as separate files in the system.

The function uses the XML template for TestVision's QTI standards for assessments and items to generate the exam (per default, this is the XML file testvision.xml provided in the xml folder of this package). The assessment template must provide one or more sections for including the items. exams2testvision will then use the single item template to generate all items, as well as the assessment and section specifications set within the template.

The default template will generate exams/assessments that sample one replicate of a question/item for each section. The usual procedure in exam/assessment generation would be to simply copy & paste the XML template of the package and adapt it to the needs of the user. Note that all specifiers that have a leading ## in the XML template will be replaced by suitable code in exams2testvision and should always be provided in the template. I.e., the user may add additional tags to the XML template or modify certain specifications, like the number of replicates/items that should be sampled for each section etc.

Per default, the individual question/item bodies are generated by function make_itembody_testvision, i.e., make_itembody_testvision checks the type of the question and will produce suitable XML code. Note that for each question type, either the arguments of make_itembody_testvision may be set within num, mchoice, schoice and string in exams2testvision, by providing a named list of specifications that should be used, or for each questiontype, a function that produces the item body XML code may be provided to num, mchoice, schoice and string. E.g., mchoice = list(shuffle = TRUE) will force only multiple choice questions to have a shuffled answerlist.

Value

exams2testvision returns a list of exams as generated by xexams.

make_itembody_testvision returns a function that generates the XML code for the itembody tag in TestVision's version of the IMS QTI 2.1 format.

References

TestVision (2020). English introduction tutorial on TestVision. https://www.testvision.nl/en/experience-testvision/tutorials-2/

IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. (2012). IMS Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) XSD Binding Version 2.1 Final. https://www.imsglobal.org/question/qtiv2p1/imsqti_bindv2p1.html

Zeileis A, Umlauf N, Leisch F (2014). Flexible Generation of E-Learning Exams in R: Moodle Quizzes, OLAT Assessments, and Beyond. Journal of Statistical Software, 58(1), 1–36. doi: 10.18637/jss.v058.i01.

See Also

exams2qti12

Examples

## load package and enforce par(ask = FALSE)
library("exams")
options(device.ask.default = FALSE)

## define an exams (= list of exercises)
myexam <- list(
  "tstat",
  "tstat2",
  "relfreq",
  "essayreg",
  "dist2",
  "boxhist"
)

## output directory
dir.create(mydir <- tempfile())

## generate .zip with set of TestVision exercises
exams2testvision(myexam, n = 3, dir = mydir)
dir(mydir)

exams documentation built on Nov. 14, 2022, 3:02 p.m.