** Using WeBWorK **

Hi Katie,

You can store test strings in perl, like:

$q[0] = "Find the slope of the line.";
$q[1] = "Find the intercept of the line.";

and now @q is an array with these two strings in it. It will help to understand the difference between single and double quotes. Then you can use randomization to generate the question. If you had also made an answer array:

$a[0] = Compute("$m");
$a[1] = Compute("$b");

you can correlate your question with its answer. When the problem begins, randomly generate an index:

$i = list_random(0..1);

and then use $q[$i] and $a[$i] appropriately. (Warning: you cannot direct refer to array elements using brackets like this if you are using PGML. If you use PGML, which I recommend, then just create $question = $q[$i], $answer = $a[$i]. Also, when using PGML, you may need to post-process your strings by using [$question]* or [$question]** rather than just plain [$question])

Different figures can be handled in the same way. Each can be its own $gr[$i] object.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the kind of answer you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

I use the case statement a lot.

@caselist = list_random(0,1,2);
foreach $case (@caselist){

if ($case ==0){
... set parameters specific for case 0
} #end of case 0

if ($case ==1){
... set parameters specific for case 1
} #end of case 1

if ($case ==2){
... set parameters specific for case 2
} #end of case 2

In the "histogram.txt" example attached I repeated the if(s) with each of their own BEGIN_TEXT/END_TEXT


Contrary to what I have done in this case, it would have probably been in better form to supply ANS() with answer checkers next to (in the same "loop") where the question ans_rule is asked. They simply need to be paired.

Other examples are found at:
http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2966
http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2799

Note that my thinking tends to be overly procedural: I jumped from fortran 4 with watfour and watfiv to this stuff.

ragards
hp