moodef

The goal of the moodef package is to support the definition of Moodle elements taking advantage of the power that R offers. In particular, in this first version, it allows the definition of questions to be included in the question bank to define quizzes.

To define the questions for the quizzes we can use the component for this purpose that includes Moodle, based on entering data through screens. It allows the import and export of questions in various formats, including XML.

Complementary, using the moodef package, we can define questionnaires from R. We have generalized 10 types of questions and simplified their definition. So, we define a question by calling a function or simply including a row in a data frame, a CSV file or an Excel file. The result is an XML file that we import into Moodle. If necessary, some parameter not considered in the generalization can be defined or adjusted there.

The package supports two styles of question definition: the simple style and the extended style. The following example is based on the simple style.

Although not shown in the next example, in each question we can include an image that is embedded in XML. We can set up the size of the images so that they are homogeneous when displayed in quizzes.

In addition to facilitating the definition of questions manually, the infrastructure offered by this package can be used to generate questions automatically or semi-automatically from R.

Installation

You can install the released version of when from CRAN with:

install.packages("moodef")

And the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("josesamos/moodef")

Example

This is a basic example which shows the definition of a question using the function:

library(moodef)

qc <- question_category(category = 'Initial test',
                        copyright = 'Copyright © 2025 Universidad de Granada',
                        license = 'License Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0',
                        author = 'Jose Samos') |>
  define_question(
    question = 'What are the basic arithmetic operations?',
    answer = 'Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.',
    a_1 = 'Addition and subtraction.',
    a_2 = 'Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root.'
  )

file <- tempfile(fileext = '.xml')
qc <- qc |>
  generate_xml_file(file)

First, we create an object using the question_category function and configure general aspects of the definition in it. Next, we define the questions, as many as we need, using the define_question function (the type of the questions is deduced from the definition). Finally, we generate the questions in XML format, in the form of a string or file. We show the result below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<quiz>
  <question type="category">
    <category>
      <text>$course$/top/Initial test</text>
    </category>
    <info format="html">
      <text></text>
    </info>
    <idnumber></idnumber>
  </question>
  <question type="multichoice">
    <name>
      <text>q_001_multichoice_what_are_the_basic_arithmetic_operations</text>
    </name>
    <questiontext format="html">
      <text><![CDATA[
        <!-- Copyright © 2025 Universidad de Granada -->
        <!-- License Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 -->
        <!-- Author: Jose Samos -->
        <p>What are the basic arithmetic operations?</p>
      ]]></text>
    </questiontext>
    <generalfeedback format="html">
      <text></text>
    </generalfeedback>
    <defaultgrade>1.0</defaultgrade>
    <penalty>0.5</penalty>
    <hidden>0</hidden>
    <idnumber></idnumber>
    <single>true</single>
    <shuffleanswers>true</shuffleanswers>
    <answernumbering>abc</answernumbering>
    <showstandardinstruction>0</showstandardinstruction>
    <correctfeedback format="moodle_auto_format">
      <text>Correct.</text>
    </correctfeedback>
    <partiallycorrectfeedback format="moodle_auto_format">
      <text>Partially correct.</text>
    </partiallycorrectfeedback>
    <incorrectfeedback format="moodle_auto_format">
      <text>Incorrect.</text>
    </incorrectfeedback>
    <answer fraction="100" format="html">
      <text>Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.</text>
      <feedback format="html">
        <text>Correct.</text>
      </feedback>
    </answer>
    <answer fraction="0" format="html">
      <text>Addition and subtraction.</text>
      <feedback format="html">
        <text>Incorrect.</text>
      </feedback>
    </answer>
    <answer fraction="0" format="html">
      <text>Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root.</text>
      <feedback format="html">
        <text>Incorrect.</text>
      </feedback>
    </answer>
  </question>
</quiz>

We can call the define_question function for each question to be defined, with the same parameters. Alternatively, we can create a data frame, a CSV file or an Excel file (with the functions available in the package) and include in them a row for each question, a column for each parameter. Below is the content of a CSV file in table format.

The generation of the questions would be similar, as shown below.

file <- system.file("extdata", "questions.csv", package = "moodef")
qc <- question_category(category = 'Initial test',
                        copyright = 'Copyright © 2025 Universidad de Granada',
                        license = 'License Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0',
                        author = 'Jose Samos') |>
  define_questions_from_csv(file = file)

file <- tempfile(fileext = '.xml')
qc <- qc |>
  generate_xml_file(file)

We do not show the content of the XML file obtained because in that example there are several questions defined and it takes up a lot of space.