exams2ilias: Generation of Exams in ILIAS Format

Description

Unfinished interface for automatic generation of exams in QTI 1.2 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, ...)

Value

exams2ilias returns a list of exams as generated by xexams.

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

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 which tries to generate QTI 1.2 with some tweaks for ILIAS (https://www.ilias.de/). Unfortunately, there is no good documentation of the precise QTI 1.2 format required by ILIAS and hence many features do not work at all or not reliably.

What had been tested most extensively in 2020/21 (during the COVID-19 pandemic), are string questions with open answers and solutions; these are rendered into ILIAS essay questions within a question pool. Also mchoice and schoice questions used to render in ILIAS. However, in more recent versions of ILIAS they may not fully correctly.

Numeric and cloze questions have not been explored and do not work yet.

Examples

Run this code

## 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)