DragMath Response question, testers needed

DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Morten Brydensholt -
Number of replies: 10

New qestion type for Moodle 1.8+

It's called DragMath Response and is build upon the shortanswer question type. It extends the shortanswer by simply adding the DragMath applet to the page.
(This idea is from the jme question type and the code is ported to 1.8).

Download from here: http://www.jitt.dk/moodle/dmr.zip.

INSTALLATION:

This is only tested with Moodle 1.8.3+ and will not work in versions below.

This is a Moodle question type. It should come as a self-contained
"dmr" folder which should be placed inside the "question/type" folder
which already exists on your Moodle web server. Remember to put the files in the "lang" folder into the corresponding "lang" folders as well.

Once you have done that, visit your Moodle admin page - the database
tables should automatically be upgraded to include an extra table for
the DMR question type.


USAGE:

The DM editor can be used to create mathematical expressions, so you
can ask questions such as "Please write the equation of a circle with center (1,2) and radius 5". In order to mark responses, they need to be converted to a text format called LaTeX.

So, the student must create the mathematical expression, and then press a button to store the answer in a text box. The content of the text box is then marked in the same way as a short-answer question.

You can use a similar process when designing the question. Using the DM applet, create the mathematical expression that is a possible (right or
wrong) answer and then press a button next to the answer boxes to store the current expression as a LaTeX code.

The dmr folder also contains the DragMath applet classes. This is to keep installation simple.
For those who allready has the applet put on the server in the html-area you migth want to call these classes by changing the codebase in the "dmrlib.php" folder in line 10 and line 45. The reason for doing this would be the practical; you only need to replace the classes in one spot every time the DragMath applet is updated.

Best regards

Morten

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In reply to Morten Brydensholt

Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Jean-Michel Védrine -
Hello,
Thanks a lot for this very interesting questiontype.
I had to make very minor HTML changes to have it working with Moodle 1.9dev (XHTML problem I think)
in dmrlib.php
change: name=language value="en">
to: name="language" value="en" /> (2 occurences)
change name=showOutputToolBar value="false">
to: name="showOutputToolBar" value="false" /> (2 occurences)
change: name=outputFormat value="Latex">
to: name="outputFormat" value="Latex" /> (2 occurences)
and change all <br> to <br />

But a lot more annoying is the fact that the "Insert from editor" seems not to work in Moodle 1.9.
I am not very good at javascript coding so I don't see anything wrong in the (very simple) javascript getLatex function.
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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Morten Brydensholt -

Jean-Michel,

Thanks for testing. I will change the html as soon as possible.

I have installed dmr at 4 sites and have had no problem, but they all run 1.8.x. I don't have any sites running 1.9.

Could you provide me with the source code from the php outputted. If you could attach this as a txt file, I will try to debug.

Morten

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In reply to Morten Brydensholt

Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Morten Brydensholt -

By help from Jean-michel I made a version 1.9 of the Dragmath question type.

Please report any errors.

Download from http://www.jitt.dk/moodle/dmr19.zip

Morten

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In reply to Morten Brydensholt

Re: Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Akif Altundal -
Thank you for this question type.

Very easy to install and quite easy to use.

I tried to install WebWorks, Stacks but I could not install. They have CAS functions.But they have a very long and hard procedure to install.

Finally, why is this question type outside of Modules and Plugins page of Moodle org ?


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In reply to Morten Brydensholt

Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Avrila Klaus -

I tried to install this plugin on 2.0 but it said it wasn't compatible.  Is there a way to make it work or accomplish the same thing with a different plugin in 2.0?

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In reply to Avrila Klaus

Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Morten Brydensholt -

Avrilla

This question type prooved to be inadequate as it requires the students to reed the teachers mind (the exact order and form of the mathematics used must match).

Instead Roger developed the 'algebra question type' http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=98670 which is capable of using some sort of CAS.
However I'm not sure that this qustion type is yet reprogrammed to work with Moodle 2.x.

Best regards
Morten

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In reply to Morten Brydensholt

Re: Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Avrila Klaus -

The algebra question type, if I understand it correctly, is a little too good at interpreting things as equal, for some of my purposes.  For example, I'm setting up a beginning algebra class that includes simplifying expressions...a question type that checks to see if an expression is equivalent to its answer will catch arithmetic errors, to be sure, but it will mark many things as correct that are not fully simplified.  I would rather have to manually put in several possible right answers than have to find a way to keep something like that from marking even more possible wrong answers as right.  (Right now I'm using vanilla shortanswer to do much the same thing except that the students would need to manually write the code or generate it externally using OpenOffice Math (yes I know it's not the same code but it's what I could come up with that the students would be able to get their hands on), so having only one code language for me to have to anticipate possibly right answers in would be a simplification for me.)

It's a case of different tools for different purposes.  I'm sure the algebra question type is quite well suited for classes that are beyond such basics, like calculus and mathematical physics, but something like shortanswer with a visual equation editor as colorful candy shell is exactly what's needed for more basic topics.

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In reply to Avrila Klaus

Re: Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Jean-Michel Védrine -

Hello,

I completely forgot about this questiontype.

AS I already ported the JME questiontype to 2.0 and this one is very similar, it should only be a little effort to upgrade it.

If some Moodle users can confirm they are interested in seeing a 2.0 version of dmr, I will do it next week, and post it in that thread.

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In reply to Jean-Michel Védrine

Re: Ang: Re: DragMath Response question, testers needed

by Lev Abramov -

You can count me in - the math/physics team said they were interested, so once it is available I will upload and use it.

Thanks in advance -

Lev

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