exams2ilias {exams}

Generation of Exams in ILIAS Format

Description

Automatic generation of exams in QTI 1.2 with some tweaks (still under development) for the learning management system ILIAS.

Usage

  exams2ilias(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 = list(fix_num = FALSE, minvalue = NA),
    mchoice = list(maxchars = c(3, NA, 3), minvalue = NA),
    schoice = mchoice, string = NULL, cloze = NULL,
    template = "ilias",
    duration = NULL, stitle = "Exercise", ititle = "Question",
    adescription = "Please solve the following exercises.",
    sdescription = "Please answer the following question.", 
    maxattempts = 1, cutvalue = 0, solutionswitch = TRUE, zip = TRUE,
    points = NULL, eval = list(partial = TRUE, negative = FALSE),
    converter = "pandoc-mathjax", xmlcollapse = TRUE,
    metasolution = FALSE, ...)

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 (or SVG) 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_qti12() (or make_itembody_qti21()). If num is a named list, these arguments will be passed to function make_itembody_qti12() (or make_itembody_qti21() using exams2qti21()).

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 "qti12.xml" and "qti21.xml".

duration

integer. Set the duration of the exam in minutes.

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. This may also be a vector so that the maximum number of attempts varies across questions. A value of Inf or 0 signals that the attempts per question are not limited.

cutvalue

numeric. The cutvalue at which the exam is passed.

solutionswitch

logical. Should the question/item solutionswitch be enabled? In OLAT this means that the correct solution is shown after an incorrect solution was entered by an examinee (i.e., this is typically only useful if maxattempts = 1).

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.

converter

character. Argument passed on to make_exercise_transform_html. The default for converter is set to "ttm" unless there are Rmd exercises in file where "pandoc" is used.

xmlcollapse

logical or character. Should line breaks be collapsed in the XML code. If TRUE everything is collapsed with spaces (" ") but other collapse characters could be supplied.

metasolution

logical. Should the solution be added to the XML output as qtimetadata tag? This currently only works for ILIAS essay questions.

...

further arguments passed on to make_exercise_transform_html.

Details

exams2ilias is a convenience interface to exams2qti12 for generating QTI 1.2 with some tweaks for ILIAS (https://www.ilias.de/). The support for ILIAS so far is somewhat rudimentary. Not all question types are currently supported. What has been tested most extensively, are string questions with open answers and solutions; these are rendered into ILIAS essay questions within a question pool. Also mchoice and schoice questions render in ILIAS, but have received less amount of testing. Numeric and cloze questions do not work yet.

Value

exams2ilias returns a list of exams as generated by xexams.

If zip is TRUE (default), an ILIAS Questionpool object is generated.

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(
  ## multiple-choice with graphics
  c("boxplots.Rmd", "scatterplot.Rmd"),

  ## multiple-choice with output or tables
  c("ttest.Rmd", "anova.Rmd", "relfreq.Rmd"),

  ## single-choice
  c("deriv2.Rmd", "swisscapital.Rmd"),

  ## string (closed)
  "function.Rmd",
  
  ## string (open-ended)
  "essayreg.Rmd"
)

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

## generate .zip with ILIAS Questionpool in temporary directory
## using a few customization options
exams2ilias(myexam, n = 3, dir = mydir,
  maxattempts = 3,
  num = list(digits = 1),
  mchoice = list(shuffle = TRUE, enumerate = FALSE),
  solutionswitch = FALSE
)
dir(mydir)