resources

As default the pagination actions are shown in the answer workflow.

Instead of using just Boostrap 3 specific code, this change makes the

Formpage usable for Bootstrap 3 and Boostrap 5.

The updated version of the inclass-exam supports now extra hint texts for lecturers and students. These extra information is displayed after the question, and is used either for feedback to the student (e.g. Einsicht) or as information for the grader (evaluation guidelines, esp. useful when multiple graders are involved). It can be controlled via setup what kind of information the question author can provide. The providable feedback is controlled via the feedback level:

Feedback level

- The feedback level can be

* "full": two input fields for feedback for correct and incorrect answers

* "single": single input fields for feedback

* "none": no input field for feedback.

- The feedback level is specified in the forms used in the

pull down menus for creating "New" test items.

- The feedback level is applicable to all test item types

(SC, MC, Text, ShortText, Ordering, Upload, Composite, Pool)

- The predefined setup is as follows:

"single" is used for all item type, except for "Pool" questions (since the feedback

is taken from the replacement question from the Pool)

- Nothing has change here

Correction notes:

- optionally, correction notes can be specified.

Since in the past, the general feedback was not shown to the students,

it was sometimes abused for correction hints for the lecturer.

Therefore, we have now a separate field

- Correction notes can be added to all item types

(SC, MC, Text, ShortText, Ordering, Upload, Composite, Pool) and are

turned on by default (except for Pool).

Visibility of general feedback and correction notes

- general feedback is shown (when provided)

* full exam-protocol is shown

* filtering single question

* filtering single submission (view with revision selection)

* exam-review for students (Einsicht)

- corrections notes are shown (when provided)

* full exam-protocol is shown

* filtering single question

* filtering single submission (view with revision selection)

- when general feedback is not provided, the exam protocol etc. looks as before

- when correction notes are not provided, the exam protocol etc. looks as before

- Negative feedback is provided,

* when percentage is known, and

* percentage is < 50%

- when negative feedback is displayed, the positive feedback is not displayed and vice versa

For composite questions, the system supports hint texts for the full composite question and additional ones for every single part.

Version number bumped to 5.10.1d32

In order to avoid the problem that students might participate on exams

intended to be held e.g. on campus from at home, one can now restrict

the access based on IP ranges. It is possible to restrict the access

via multiple range blocks that can be predefined by the sysadmins. One

could predefine e.g. IP range blocks for "Campus LAN", "On Site",

"VPN", etc., which can be selected by lecturers for individual exams.

Every IP range block can be defined via multiple entries of disallowed

and allowed IP ranges, where the addresses can be specified via IPv4

or IPv6 CIDR blocks (e.g. 127.208.0.0/16), or with wild cards or

individual IP addresses. The usage of CIDR blocks requires an update

to the updated version of NaviServer.

The IP restriction is used in the current implementation for

restricting the regular start of the exam (proctored or

non-proctored). Lecturers can still perform test runs for exams with

restricted access.

Bump version number to 5.10.1d31

- advantages:

* smaller workflow instance

- no danger that page is too large for caching, even for large exams.

- smaller objects mean also better performance

* modification date in exam is not modified when statistics

are updated

* easier extensible

- New function WorkflowPage->childpage

easy to use interface for creating child pages

- render_submission=exam_protocol: changed name of

parameter "-form_objs" to "-filter_form_ids", since

form_objs are used typically to keep objects, not ids

- Still to do: policy for inclass-exam-statistics.wf

- Bumped version number to 5.10.1d25

- added modal window for showing all configuration options

- depending on the state of an exam (whether students have stated

working on the exam or not) different options can be

altered. E.g. the grading scheme can be adjusted at any time, since

it is not visible to students prior to exam review.

- improved configurability of form-fields:

. new feature: fc_repository for shared definitions

(can be reused in the same configuration on multiple occasions)

. when form-constraints are defined with an empty short-spec,

the system tries to look this up from the fc_repository.

- extended answer manager:

. new method: student_submissions_exist

. renamed methods

. "student_submissions" -> "submissions"

(since result my include as well test run results)

. "get_answers" -> "get_answer_attributes"

to better distinguish from "submissions"

- base "merge_constraints" on dicts

- prefer forwarder over instance variable for referring

the question manager(QM)

- extended Message keys with "Configuration"

- added missing German translations in message keys

- bump version to 5.10.1d17

Grading schemes provide a means to map achieved percentages to a numeric grade.

In the current versions, a fixed number of 5 grades is supported.

A grading scheme consists of a grounding scheme and grading boundaries.

- A grading scheme can be selected at exam definition time

- Lecturers can define their own grading schemes and reuse these between exams

- Available grounding schemes:

* no rounding (recommended for small exams, e.g. 5 minutes or 2 points)

* by percent (the calculated percentages are rounded to the provided number of digits)

* by points (the calculated points are rounded to the provided number of digits)

- The grounding precision can be defined by the user (e.g. to 2 digits)

- The grading boundaries represent percentages boundaries necessary for a certain grade

- When selecting no grading scheme, no grading information is provided in the exam protocol

(just percentages)

More changes:

- allow grading also, when student has not submitted the exam

- added percentage information in the grading-box (esp. useful for composite questions)

- renamed predefined grading schemes to more neutral terms

- provide easy-to-type names for question-manager, answer-manager and form-loader

- new utility for more robust list-comparions

- defined validating form-field type for grading boundaries

This options is useful e.g. for e.g. mock exams to avoid privacy issues.

Features:

- select random questions from some folder

(Currently siblings, i.e., folders of the same package instance)

- one exam can have multiple pool questions, potentially from other pools

- pools can be links to other folders (which are no siblings)

- The current folder can be used as well as a pool folder. In this

case, other not-used items can be selected as replacement items

given these match the specified filter characteristics

- Question filtering

* filter by item type:

allow one to select from all/some/some item types

(mc, sc, short text, reordering, composite, ...):

use as replacement items only examples of these types

* filter by minutes and/or points:

use as replacement items only items with matching points/minutes

* filter by language:

use as replacement items only items in a certain language

* Filter per item name pattern:

use as replacement items only items matching a name.

When (short-) names are used systematically, one can e.g.

use the date in the name and specify only items from e.g.

one year ago, via "*2020*", or from some chapter "*ch01", ...

Certainly, it is also possible to use different item

folders for this

Potential further steps:

- Currently, exams containing pool questions are treated as

auto-correctable (which implies automated exam-review (Einsicht), when

from the question pools only question from strictly closed questions

are selected (MC, SC, Ordering). Depending on the detailed settings,

also other item types could be possible (via correct-when), but this

requires a deeper analysis of every question, which is so far not

performed.

- Categorized items: technically, the infrastructure is mostly here to

allow also filtering by categories. This would allow one to select

e.g. from technical questions, case examples, knowledge transfer

questions, research-oriented questions... which are orthogonal to

the filtering currently available. Every lecturer can define

own categories depending on their needs, we could provide

university-wide category-trees, etc. Of course, one could also

define separate pools for these purposes, but categorizing is

probably more convenient and more flexible.

- Performance: when question pools become large (500+ questions) and

the cohorts as well (500+), the current version might require more

tuning. The only critical time is the exam-start, where the random

question placeholders have to be resolved for every student. The

approach from this weekend uses basic caching, but maybe this has to

be extended.

- Protecting selected questions: Question pools are more detached from

an exam than single exercises, a lecturer might have in mind. One

should not allow one to delete questions/question pools when these are

in use. Probably deletion should be a move to a trash-can, which is

actually, an issue for all exams, but getting more important with

pool questions.

- Handling of potential duplicates: When items are pulled from a

question pool, a replacement item is selected by making sure that

this item does not occur already in the query selection. Therefore,

one can safely draw two questions from the same question pool

without fearing that a student gets the same question twice.

This duplicate checking might require some fine-tuning:

* the system checks for duplicates in an exam via POOL/NAME.

* if a lecturer uses two pool-questions in an exam pointing to the same pool,

the systems makes sure, the same question is not used twice.

* however, if a teacher adds a question q1 to pool1 and the same question to pool2,

these two instances have different item ids and are regarded as two different

questions. One could make a test for only checking NAME (without POOL),

but then it might be the case that certain questions are not accepted

although these are different, because they have the same name.

- Statistics: so far, i have not provided any special answer

statistics for treating pool questions.

- xowiki: added property "spellcheck" to formfield classes "textarea" and "text_fields"

- xowf: allow per-exam to activate/deactivate spellcheck in these widget classes

A composite question is a test-item containing other regular test

items. This makes it possible to define a larger test item case for

which arbitrary other questions can be associated (e.g. short text

question plus an MC and ordering question etc.). The randomization

features (shuffling, x out of N, etc.) of the included test-items are

preserved such that it is possible to present the student e.g. a sub

question where only 2 out of 5 possible alternatives are displayed.

The provided implementation builds for a composite question consisting

of a constant exam intro text and the selected sub items including

points, minutes etc. The points and minutes of the composite question

are computed as the sum of the points and minutes of the

sub-items. The actual sub-items are constructed at runtime such that

per-user randomization can be applied.

Current shortcoming: question with percent-substitutions are not

supported (since the exam intro text is placed at composite form

creation time already into the form, therefore, it is the same for all

students). Furthermore, the substitution semantics are not clear

concerning the included content.