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Radomized essay questions?

Radomized essay questions?

by Robert Mařík -
Number of replies: 4

Hello, I would like to use randomized essay questions. One example is "Write stationary/nonstationary diffusion equation in cartesian coordiantes in one/two/theree dimensions with/without sources for homogeneous/nonhomogeneous material with linear/nonlinear Fick's law." Randomiser selects variants and builds the question and the student writes her/his answer.

I would like to see the question on the same page where I grade the answers. Is it possible?

Just now I instruct the students to include the question in the answer, but this allows to modify the question by the student. Sometimes I also view the question as the corresponding student, but this is uncomfortable.

Any idea?

Thanks. Robert

In reply to Robert Mařík

Re: Radomized essay questions?

by Alex Jordan -

With essay questions, I only know of the grading page where your own version of the question is rendered at the top, and all student answers are displayed. So as far as I know the answer to your question is no, and if the question is randomly different for the students, this presents the headache that you have.

But if you are on that page, at the start of each row is a student's name as a link. If you open that link in a new tab, it actually takes you directly to their version of the question (while acting as that student). You can use this and going back and forth between two tabs, and it's not terrible.

FWIW, I avoid coding randomization into an essay question. Partly because of this issue. But also because of the mental gymnastics I would need to while assessing their answers and writing feedback, shifting gears from one random version to the next.


In reply to Robert Mařík

Re: Radomized essay questions?

by Glenn Rice -

As Alex said, the current grader does not show each student's problem, and you could click on the students name to open each students problem.

However, I am hoping that this will be different with the next release of webwork.  I have a pull request that introduces a new manual grader (https://github.com/openwebwork/webwork2/pull/1162).  This grader is available for all problems (homework and gateway quiz and not just essay type).  It is in each student's question, and is activated by a checkbox at the bottom similar to the "Correct Answers" checkbox.  The pull request also adds a "student navigator" at the top of the page when you are acting as a student so you can conveniently change students.  It has a next student and previous student button, as well as a drop down menu to switch to the problem of a selected student.  Once the problem grader is shown, it stays shown when changing students or questions and also shows the results table.

In reply to Glenn Rice

Re: Radomized essay questions?

by Robert Mařík -

Thank you. I was not able to install the patch on my test installation (I used https://patch-diff.githubusercontent.com/raw/openwebwork/webwork2/pull/1162.patch on the installation which corresponds to github version with last commit Sun Sep 20 12:46:45) , but according to your description this patch seems to be useful. 

I sometimes prefer short feedback in the form of video rather than typing long answers. I use ctrlv.tv for this, since with this tool I just capture the screen with my speech and share link with no need to upload video. However with the current setting it is necessary to switch to the students version, click preview to render her/his answer, record the comments and return the the grader where I paste the link. It seems that your patch will be a great time saver for people with a similar approach.

Btw, what exactly you mean under "next student" button. It is just the next student in the list, or the next student with a nonempty answer? The second option seems to be better for me.


In reply to Robert Mařík

Re: Radomized essay questions?

by Glenn Rice -

The patch will apply cleanly to the develop branch of WeBWorK.  It probably will not apply cleanly to the master (release) branch.  If you have local modifications, it may not apply cleanly in that case either.

The "next student" button switches to the next student in the class at this point.