Hello everyone,
Can the calculated question type in quizzes be easily extended to allow for short answers that contain characters apart from one or more “calculated” numerical answers?
What I would like to do is to be able to include characters among numerical answers so this question type can be used for algorithmically generated questions in algebra. Let me show you an example:
Factor out the following trinomial:
$$x^2+{={a}+{b}}x+{={a}*{b}}$$
Type your answer in the box below. If this trinomial can be factored remember to use parentheses to delimit the binomial factors. If the trinomial is not factorable type the word: NO . Please don't enter any spaces!
The calculated type question allows me to generate datasets with selected positive integers {a} and {b}. I would like to be able to have the students type a string that contains the product of two binomials (in different possible orders-which I could take care of by using different accepted answers):
(x+a)(x+b), where {a} and {b} must be the integers entered in the set.
As you can see, since I’ll be handling Integers, I am not that worried about tolerances different from “0.0”. The important thing is to allow: 1) other characters in the answer, and 2) the ability to identify more than one correct answer (in the case above both {a} and {b}).
Adding such feature to the code would allow also to assess students on solving equations that involve multiple numerical solutions (like quadratic equations). Would this be a not very time consuming feature to add? Can someone do it?
Thank you so much for your time and help!
Cristina
