r-exams

exam2moodle seems to ignore negative option for single choice questions


Hello and thank you in advance.

I am trying to create a moodle exam and all seems okay except points for single choice questions. What I would like to have is a maximum of -0.25 for a wrong answer of a single choice question (including true/false), e.g.,

What is 1+1? a) 2 b) 3 c) 4 should be 0.25 if someones chose b) or c); this should also be the case if there were more options, e.g., d) 5, e) 6, and f) 7.

What I have tried is the following

library("exams")
elearn_exam <- c("11_sc_MCAB.Rnw")
eSChoice <- exams_eval(negative = 0.25)
exams2moodle(elearn_exam, 
             schoice = list(eval = eSChoice))

Note: 11_sc_MCAB.Rnw is a single choice question with 3 answer possibilities

When I import it into moodle or have a look a t the XML file (see below), it states fraction="-50" while I would expect fraction="-25"

<question type="multichoice">
<name>
<text> Q1 : 11_sc_MCAB </text>
</name>
<questiontext format="html">
<text><![CDATA[
<p>
<p>EN: Question - here is the question?</p>
</p>]]></text>
</questiontext>
<penalty>0</penalty>
<defaultgrade>1</defaultgrade>
<shuffleanswers>false</shuffleanswers>
<single>true</single>
<answernumbering>abc</answernumbering>
<answer fraction="-50" format="html">
<text><![CDATA[<p>
ANSWER A
</p>]]></text>
</answer>
<answer fraction="100" format="html">
<text><![CDATA[<p>
ANSWER B</p>]]></text>
</answer>
<answer fraction="-50" format="html">
<text><![CDATA[<p>
ANSWER C
</p>]]></text>
</answer>
</question>

Solution

  • TL;DR Thanks for the report, this is a bug in exams versions up to 2.4-0 (the current CRAN version at the time of writing). I just fixed it in the development version on R-Forge.

    Details: After installation of exams > 2.4-0 (see below) your code should work as expected. I created a file 11_sc_MCAB.Rnw with:

    \begin{question}
    EN: Question - here is the question?
    \begin{answerlist}
      \item ANSWER A
      \item ANSWER B
      \item ANSWER C
    \end{answerlist}
    \end{question}
    
    \exname{11_sc_MCAB}
    \extype{schoice}
    \exsolution{010}
    

    Then I ran:

    exams2moodle("11_sc_MCAB.Rnw",
      schoice = list(eval = exams_eval(negative = 0.25)),
      table = NULL)
    

    This yields the output moodlequiz.xml with:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <quiz>
    
    
    <question type="category">
    <category>
    <text>$course$/moodlequiz/Exercise 1</text>
    </category>
    </question>
    
    
    <question type="multichoice">
    <name>
    <text> Q1 : 11_sc_MCAB </text>
    </name>
    <questiontext format="html">
    <text><![CDATA[
    <p>
    <p>EN: Question - here is the question?</p>
    </p>]]></text>
    </questiontext>
    <penalty>0</penalty>
    <defaultgrade>1</defaultgrade>
    <shuffleanswers>false</shuffleanswers>
    <single>true</single>
    <answernumbering>abc</answernumbering>
    <answer fraction="-25" format="html">
    <text><![CDATA[<p>
    ANSWER A
    </p>]]></text>
    </answer>
    <answer fraction="100" format="html">
    <text><![CDATA[<p>
    ANSWER B
    </p>]]></text>
    </answer>
    <answer fraction="-25" format="html">
    <text><![CDATA[<p>
    ANSWER C
    </p>]]></text>
    </answer>
    </question>
    
    </quiz>
    

    with the fraction="-25" as you expected.

    Note: The table = NULL argument is not necessary in the exams2moodle() call above. It just makes the XML a bit simpler. For exams > 2.4-0 by default some additional CSS is included in order to yield somewhat nicer table formatting.

    Installation of the development version: Until exams > 2.4-0 is released on CRAN, you can install the development version from R-Forge or R-universe. At the time of writing only the latter works for technical reasons. Use:

    install.packages("exams", repos = "https://zeileis.R-universe.dev")