Automatic generation of exams in TestVision format (still under development) for the online testing system TestVision Online.
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", envir = NULL, engine = NULL,
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, rule = "false2", negative = FALSE), converter = "pandoc",
base64 = FALSE, mode = "hex", ...) make_itembody_testvision(shuffle = FALSE, defaultval = NULL,
minvalue = NULL, maxvalue = NULL,
enumerate = FALSE, digits = NULL,
tolerance = is.null(digits), maxchars = 12,
eval = list(partial = TRUE, rule = "false2", negative = FALSE), solutionswitch = TRUE)
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.
character. A specification of a (list of) exercise files.
integer. The number of copies to be compiled from file.
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.)
character. The default is the current working directory.
character. A name prefix for resulting exercises and ZIP file.
logical. Should output be suppressed when calling
xweave?
character specifying the path of the directory (along with its
sub-directories) in which the files in file are stored
(see also xexams).
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.
character specifying a directory for storing supplements, by
default this is chosen via tempfile.
logical. Should information on progress of exam generation be reported?
numeric. Options for rendering PNG
graphics passed to xweave.
logical. Should graphics be rendered in SVG or PNG (default)?
character, ignored. The encoding is always assumed to be UTF-8.
argument passed to xweave (which passes
it to knit).
argument passed to xweave indicating whether
"Sweave" (default) or "knitr" should be used for rendering Rnw exercises.
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().
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.
character. The IMS QTI 1.2 or 2.1 template that should be used. Currently,
the package provides "testvision.xml".
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.
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.
character. Description (of length 1) for the overall assessment (i.e., exam).
character. Vector of descriptions for each section, omitted if empty
(or NULL or FALSE).
integer. The maximum attempts for one question, may also be set to
Inf.
logical. Should the question/item solutionswitch be enabled?
logical. Should the resulting XML file (plus supplements) be zipped?
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.
named list, specifies the settings for the evaluation policy, see function
exams_eval.
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.
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.
character. See function tth.
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.
logical. Insert potential solutions in enumerated list?
integer. How many digits should be used for num exercises?
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.
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.
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 substantially from the plain QTI 2.1
standard in several places, the exams2qti21 cannot be used
directly. Instead, exams2testvision is a new interface that allows for meeting TestVision's
requirements for XML-imports.
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.
Please note the following for cloze questions: Although any combination
of the four item types can be successfully uploaded into TestVision, cloze
questions containing mhoice do not work properly (it is therefore
advised to not use mchoice within cloze).
TestVision (2020). English introduction tutorial on TestVision. https://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. tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v058.i01").
exams2qti12
## 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",
"boxhist2"
)
## output directory
dir.create(mydir <- tempfile())
## generate .zip with set of TestVision exercises
exams2testvision(myexam, n = 3, dir = mydir)
dir(mydir)
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