exams2lops {exams}

Generation of Exams in LOPS Exam Server Format (WU Wien)

Description

Automatic generation of exams in LOPS exam server format (WU Wien).

Usage

  exams2lops(file, n = 1L, nsamp = NULL, dir = ".", name = NULL, 
    quiet = TRUE, edir = NULL, tdir = NULL, sdir = NULL, verbose = FALSE,
    solution = TRUE, doctype = NULL, head = NULL, resolution = 100, width = 4, 
    height = 4, svg = FALSE,  encoding = "UTF-8", envir = NULL, engine = NULL,
    converter = "tex2image", base64 = FALSE,
    auto_scramble = TRUE, ...)

  make_exams_write_lops(name = NULL, auto_scramble = 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.

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?

solution

logical. Should the solution be included in the HTML output?

doctype

character vector with a DOCTYPE tag for the HTML page. By default HTML4 is employed.

head

character vector for the head tag. By default a simple header is employed, setting the font to Arial.

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.

envir

argument passed to xweave (which passes it to knit).

engine

argument passed to xweave indicating whether "Sweave" (default) or "knitr" should be used for rendering Rnw exercises.

converter

character. Workhorse function for transforming LaTeX code to HTML.

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.

auto_scramble

logical. Should answers be scrambled automaticall?

...

arguments passed on to make_exercise_transform_html.

Details

exams2lops will produce a .zip file that may be uploaded. It 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 the LOPS exam server XML format (WU Wien).

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) a simple writer function is set up on the fly that embeds the transformed HTML code into the final XML files for each question and the exam.

Note that in make_exams_write_lops only multiple and single choice questions are supported at the moment, since the LOPS exam server XML format (WU Wien) is used to generate printed versions for large scale multiple choice exams. In addition, only images of the question/questionlist/solution/solutionlist should be generated, since the server has only minimum support for e.g. MathML markup used to produce mathematical formulas.

Value

exams2lops returns a list of exams as generated by xexams.

make_exams_write_lops eturns a function that generates the XML code for the question in LOPS exam server format (WU Wien).

References

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

xexams, ttm, tth, tex2image, make_exercise_transform_html,

Examples

## Not run: 
## output directory
dir.create(mydir <- tempfile())

## generate the exam
exams2lops(c("scatterplot.Rmd", "boxplots.Rmd"), dir = mydir)
dir(mydir)

## End(Not run)