AutoEd: An Online Assignment Generation and Marking System
Contents
1. Shows the dialog box Call this after all custom content is added to the dialog box The box is centered based on its current size It will not recenter if it s sized is changed after it s opened While a box is open clicking off the box will cause the box s header to flash and clicking links will not direct you to another page and form elements will not focus The variable dbox is true while the dialog box is open This can be used to disable other clickable events Header flashing is disabled for the first 100 milliseconds after opening the box to prevent flashing from the initial click that opened the dialog box e Dialog flash causes the dialog box s header to flash If called with Dialog count O it will flash 6 times once every 150 milliseconds e enableFlash Enables dialog box header flashing Called 100 milliseconds after a box is opened e handleClick e Causes the dialog box s header to flash by calling Dialog flash with Dialog count 0 Called when the user clicks off the dialog box Categories js Summary Creates a dialog box for selecting a category Categories have parent categories The root categories are listed Clicking the sign next to a category shows all the children categories of that category Clicking the sign then hides the children categories Uses dialog js 35 Variables e categories An array categories id contains a list of all children categories of the category wit2. 21 3 3 6 Creating a Test Welcome Alyosha Pushak My Courses My Questions My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out Test Template y 25 x 2011 x 15 E 00 Convert Cubic Inches to Cubic Centimeters Convert Pounds L reto Grams Cubic Centimeter MC Quesos E MC Question Test Static Image Copy a Figure 11 Create a Test On the course page for the course you want to create a test for click Create a Test You ll be taken to the test creation page where you fill out the following fields e Test Name The name of the test May not be left blank Max 200 characters e Due Date To make the test an assignment check the assigned check box You will then be able to give the test a due date The default due date is one week from the current date rounded down to the hour The due date must be at least 24 hours from now e Test Type Determines how many times the questions can be answered and how they are answered The different test types are as follows o All at Once All parts of a question are marked together Once marked the answers may not be changed However the student may regenerate the question to try again with different values o One Part at a Time Students answer one question part at a time and must have the previous question part answered correctly before they can answer the next part They may submit their answers as many times as they li
3. s name will display the file s URL and if the file is an image display the image underneath the URL 4 Development 4 1 Timeline August 2010 e First version of backend done by Dr Ramon Lawrence started working on the project September e Ability to create and edit question and test templates through the site added 24 October e First online assignment for PHYS 112 January 2011 e First online assignment for PHYS 122 e Added functionality for marker to do unit conversions between prefixes when marking e Question template searching added February e First online assignment for the second section of PHYS 122 e Functionality for modifying question templates that are used in assignments added e Ability to randomize unit prefixes added e Dr Andis Klergis uses AutoEd for an assignment in BIOC 308 March e Functionality for instructors to override student marks added 4 2 Challenges Several challenges and errors occurred during the development process some of which are not fully understood for which workarounds were found The first concerns loading pictures from the database using jsp When requesting one picture the image is consistently loaded properly However for a page requesting multiple pictures from the database some of the pictures often fail to load To fix this when our equation solver parses the lt pic gt tags used to embed images in questions it assigns a unique id to the picture ele
4. which implement this class Variables e id The id of this question The input element s have this id or name if there are multiple elements for multiple choice e mark The user s mark for this question part e score Total marks this question part is worth e solver a boolean indicating if the question part answer type is text with solver Only the text question part class has this field 37 Function getAnswer Returns the user s answer If this is a text type with a solver and the answer begins with an the answer string will be passed to miniSolver js to solve the equation clearAnswer Clears the user s answer lock Locks the question part disabling and greying out the input for answering If the user hasn t answered this question yet and the entire test isn t locked it gives the input an onfocus event that displays an alert message informing the user they must answer the previous question part correctly before answering this one unlock Unlocks the question part so it can be answered Test js Summary Contains methods shared by the pages for doing assignments practice tests and practice questions Variables type The type of the test which effects how questions are answered See section 3 3 6 questions An array containing the questions qmarks An array containing the user s mark for each question score The user s total mark for the test numLo
5. survey 70 of students indicated they preferred online assignments to written assignments and 15 said they liked both equally However when given a choice for doing the last assignment online or on paper 92 of students did it online So when given the choice most students who say they liked them equally and even some who said they preferred paper assignments chose to do the assignment online Over 72 of students rated their experiences with the system as satisfactory or very satisfactory Only 3 rated it very unsatisfactory 45 indicated they thought AutoEd improved their learning 81 reported it helped them complete their assignments and 84 said it helped them hand the assignments in on time 92 of students thought AutoEd should be used again in Phys122 and 87 thought it could be used in other courses such as chemistry math biology and even English A1 A2 A3 A4 Handed In 2010 paper 89 94 89 84 2011 online 93 90 93 98 Average Grade 2010 paper 60 3 82 9 67 3 62 1 2011 online 84 4 71 3 77 5 86 3 Median Grade 2010 paper 67 1 92 2 77 9 75 2011 online 100 100 100 100 Table 1 Paper Vs Online Table 1 compares results from the first 4 assignments for the second term PHYS 122 in 2010 when assignments were done on paper to the results from 2011 when assignments were online Grades and the percentage of students who completed the assignments improved when assignments were done online for all as
6. 3 3 Instructor View 3 3 1 Course Page The course page view for instructors is similar to the student view The differences are detailed here In the course header there is an additional link to the Student List where the list of students enrolled in the course and their student numbers can be viewed 14 3 3 2 Viewing Test Results Student Grades for Once Chance View Statistics Download Results Student Name Grade Start Date Submission Date Se ee 2011 02 22 20 16 A os Figure 8 Student Grades On the assignments page below the list of assignments when an assignment is clicked on a list of students will appear below the table of assignments listing the date the student started and completed the assignment n a if the student hasn t submitted the assignment and their grade percentage for their best attempt at the assignment Clicking a student s name allows you to view the student s assignment and see the answers they submitted Above the list of student marks the assignment name along with the links View Statistics and Download Results are listed Summary Statistics for Assignment 4 Started Completed Average Highest Median Lowest Students Started 122 131 93 13 Show Time Data Figure 9A Assignment Results 15 Summary Statistics for Assignment 4 125 1 Students Started Students Completeted 100 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb 25 Feb 26 Feb 27 Feb 28 Show Overall Data Figure
7. 9B Assignment Results Click View Statistics to see a graph of the assignment results You will see a bar graph displaying the number of students who started the test the number that completed the test the average highest mark median and lowest mark as percentages Mouse over a column to view the percentage and for students started and completed the number of students started completed over the total number of students in the class Instructors may try assignments Their scores are not reflected in this data Click Show Time Data to view a graph of students started and students completed over time The start and end points of the graph are the assigned and due date of the assignment You can return to the original graph by clicking Show Overall Data On the assignments page clicking Download Results will download a csv comma separated values file containing the student name number prefixed with an s so as to be compatible with WebCT mark and grade percentage 16 3 3 3 Creating a Question Template Question Template 4 X Question Part 1 Figure 10 Question Template On the My Questions page click Create a Question to view the question template creation page You can edit the following fields Unless otherwise indicated fields may be left blank Question Template Fields e Question Name The name of the question Cannot be left blank Max 100 c
8. Abt scone E cae eiesiel Gedaetne els EA Table Hf Contents 4 4 gs na aaa anna nen na han nennt ann dns kun Fun Table of Figures 1 Introduction 1 1 Motivation 2a aa 1 2 Thesis Stat 1 3 Definitions ement and Contributions occccooocccnncnccnunoccnonanononoccnnnnoncnonarononarcnnnnncconos 1 4 System OVErVieWw aiii Aaa 2 Background an ni ss ietnaunstaneseusasaantdewentereends 3 User Manual 3 1 General View ccccccccccscccescccecescceeccececessccecesccecessnacesuacesecaesssccacesuaceaseneeecceeeccsesacauess A NT SL 2 MY COUESOS contratan airis lei 3 1 3 Search INE QUESTIONS E JA Student VIEW id dd aa aa 3 21 COURSE Page 2 di A Aa A aaaea auaa tadas 3 2 2 Assignments PB a ur ada aatia Ai 3 2 3 Practic INE QUESTIONS ea ln A a a aT aaisa taande 3 2 4 Entering ANSWETS copada onea en an AaS aaa AARAA Oaia idad 3 29 A O B AA SWAAN OLA A ESEA o RAINANE ee AA EAV EAA ae E A AE A E A hehe EU A aa 35322 VIEWING Test Results iia a A acia RAS 15 3 3 3 Creating a Question Template cccccccccncnnnnnonnnnonanononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrnno non nennen 17 33 4 QUESTION A een IR Ian TAN 19 io We dro 5 acer ee ee Me ON RE 19 3 3 4 2 Binary Operators isisi sev nn iin Bada deeded aaa bienes 20 3 3 4 3 EQN FUNCION St sisi sca iee sec ee inet 20 3 3 43 Statements TE 20 3 3 4 4 Other Special Tags iinn e a RE E ARR cnn nennen 21 3 3 4 5 Unit Prefixes in bi 21 3 3 5
9. Assignments and Practice Tests ccoccccnnonnnononononoonnnnnnonononnnnnnnnnnananannnnr ono nnnnnnnnnns 21 3 3 6 Creating O IAN 22 3 3 7 Modifying Assignments and their Questions ccccccccccnnnnnonnnanonononnnnnnonononannnnnnnns 23 33 8 Uploading Fles ida 24 4 Development dat id 24 ALMA ii 24 A NN 25 5 Results and Feedback iicciacanscaccascaciaccvenreneenecnassnisatieitecstssancenssassesnesnanerdcannseonnentaeenienl 27 O Conclusions ee eneee eenei oneee er eNe dada idad 28 PUES WON IC O AT 28 ACKNOWiICl ee MENESES A bu hns hehe 29 PUP PG A A A 30 References E AAO EAE AEA E 46 Table of Figures Figure Ll My COUTO Sii ea En dida a a ee 8 Figure 2 Search Questions aia 9 Figure 3 Assignments Page inican nenaon a a i aa aE 10 Figure 4 Practice QUESO ui ta 11 Fig re 53 Practice Testi liado 12 Figure 6 Assignment Attempts ccccsssssscecccccececcecsesscececeseessseecceseuseseecessseussceessuaaseeees 13 Figure TAS BOM Oui A tii 13 Figures Student Grades ia 15 Figure 9A Assignment Results oooooconocococnncnonnnnnnnnnnnnnononanononnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnos 15 Figure 9B Assignment Results cccccconcnonnnnonooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnnnanannn ono nono nnnnnnnnnnnnannnannnnnnannnes 16 Figure 10 Question Template oocccccccccccnnnonnnnnnnononononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnn non nnnnnnonnnonnnennnons 17 Figure 11 Created Test reisten ico it dias 22 Fig re 123 File Upload e
10. Case Sensitive answer is matched against a string case sensitive Integer answer is compared with an integer Integer with Units answer must have an integer value and units which must match a correct answer Unit conversions aren t allowed for integers as the conversions could result in non integer values Real Number answer is a double It is marked correct if it is within a certain range of the correct answer Real Number With Units answer is a double with units Integer Vector a list of integers Integer Vector with Units a list of integers followed by units Real Vector a list of doubles Real Vector with Units a list of doubles followed by units Text Vector a list of strings all compared with case insensitive Some answer types have additional fields that must be filled out as follows O Precision Must be filled out for all types containing real numbers The answer is marked correct if it is in the range of the correct answer or correct answer precision Must be an integer between 0 and 100 inclusive Default value is 2 18 o Enable Unit Conversions this option is available for any types containing real numbers with units If enabled if the base units in the answer match the correct answer s base units but the prefixes don t match the answer will be converted to match the prefix of the correct answer e Text The text that appears for this question part Written in
11. Demo Student My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out A Calculate the angle of incidence 1 on the water air interface Figure 5 Practice Test From the course assignments page click on a practice test to practice the test You may also practice assignments Clicking the assignment name will list your attempts at that assignment 12 Click Practice this Test to practice the test You may practice a test as many times as you like At the top of the page you will see the test header This header will be the same when doing an assignment On the left the question numbers are listed along with you mark and the total marks for each question and the test total and your overall mark and percentage Clicking a question number will scroll the page to that question On the right the time you ve had the page opened is listed In the center a custom message from the instructor may appear if the instructor creates one Below the header the questions appear as they did when practicing a question Inputting and submitting answers is done the same as it is for practicing questions 3 2 6 Assignments Welcome Test Studentl My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out Assignments Questions Term Winter 1 Sect 001 Instructor Alyosha Pushak Test Name Assigned Date Due Date Grade Grade Start Date Submission Date Active Assignments One Part at a Time 42 86 2011 04 18 15 06 n a One Part at a Tim
12. HTML using special lt eqn gt tags to specify calculations and random variable assignment e Correct Answers The correct answers Use lt eqn gt tags to calculate the answers Click Add Another Answer and another text box will appear for inputting another answer At least once correct answer must be given e Incorrect Answer Click Add Another Answer and two text boxes will appear one for the answer and one for a hint The hint will appear when the student tries the corresponding incorrect answer In multiple choice questions the incorrect answers are listed as possible answers The hint field may be left blank At the bottom you may click Add Another Part and the fields for another question part will appear Each question template must have at least one question template part Clicking the red X next to a question part or field will remove that question part or field When you are finished click submit to create your question 3 3 4 Question Syntax lt eqn gt tags are used to specify calculations and random variable assignment within tests This section details the syntax and commands used in the eqn tags 3 3 4 1 Variables Variables are prefixed by the character For example lt eqn Sa 3 gt would give the variable Sa the value 3 This will create the variable Sa if it wasn t already created otherwise it will just overwrite the value in Sa Variables can have three types e Number May be an integer or a
13. Instructors will see the courses they instruct Course details the course number name term section number and instructor name are shown Clicking the course number or name will bring you to the course page for that course 3 1 3 Searching Questions Welcome Demo Student My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out Search by Category Search by Class Physics PHYS 122 y Page 1 y Displaying Results 1 20 of 28 Questions Figure 2 Search Questions You may search for question templates by category and or by course If you leave both category and course blank the search will retrieve all question templates Twenty questions are displayed per page The question template name description author s name creation date and category are listed for each template Clicking the question template name allows you to practice a question generated from that template Instructors will see a copy link for each template Clicking this will bring you to the question editing page with the data loaded for that template Clicking save will create a copy of the question that belongs to you with any changes you made in the editor Instructors will also see a modify link for any template they created allowing them to edit the template For more information on creating editing question templates see sections 3 3 3 and 3 3 4 3 2 Student View 3 2 1 Course Page Each course page has a header with three rows The first r
14. Marks the given answer but saves nothing to the database The appropriate extract methods are used to extract the answer int units etc from the answer String and the appropriate method in the marker class is called according to the answer type The answer is checked against each answer in the ArrayList of answers The results of marking are returned in a String including any hints that go with that answer This class also contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method 45 References 1 Laurson Ole 2011 Flot Google Code http code google com p flot 2 Query 2010 http query com 3 Java Zoom UploadBean Support http www javazoom net jzserviets uploadbean uploadbean html 4 Oracle 2011 JavaCc http java net projects javacc 5 Technische Universiteit Eindhoven 2007 2008 MathDox Formula Editor http www mathdox org formulaeditor 6 WebAssign http www webassign net 7 Aplia http www aplia com 8 Mastering Physics http www masteringphysics com 9 Gradiance http www gradiance com 10 Carnegie Learning http www carnegielearning com 11 Blackboard http www blackboard com 12 Quest http www quest cns utexas edu 13 LON CAPA http www lon capa org 46
15. a user somehow could view their own test with someone else s test in their session it would account for all the errors we encountered If the student hit submit and the expected answer in their session was different from the test they were viewing it wouldn t accept their answer We had some students complaining that their answers weren t accepted We assumed this was because they weren t formatting their answers properly or caused by tomcat restarting and wiping everyone s session lf the expected answer in their session matched that for the test they were viewing when submitting their answer they would overwrite the other student s overall mark and also the marked date for that question part confirmed that the marked dates were after the submission date for some question parts in tests that had their overall mark affected The last and rarest case where question answers and marks were overwritten would occur when the user with the wrong test in their session clicked Save This happened very rarely as most students don t use the Save button was able to view one test with another in my session by opening one test then opening another test and then clicking back until was viewing the first test was then able to reproduce all the errors we encountered before It doesn t make sense for the students to have gotten someone else s test in their session in this way though We still don t know how the session data becomes inconsis
16. double e String Strings must be surrounded by single quotes The quotes will be removed when the string is printed in the question e NumuUnit a number together with a unit Units are made up of a base unit like m or V and a prefix like k or n For a full list of unit prefixes see section 3 3 4 5 The NumUnit with number 2 1 prefix k and base unit m would be printed as 2 1 km When a NumUnit is added to or subtracted from another NumUnit the base units must match or an error will be thrown There are several functions for manipulating NumUnits detailed in section 3 3 4 3 19 3 3 4 2 Binary Operators Binary operators take two arguments one on the left and one on the right For example lt eqn Sa 4 gt would return the value of Sa plus 4 addition subtraction multiplication division modulo and variable assignment are supported 3 3 4 3 EQN Functions e format val num Returns a string representation of the number val with num decimals Val can be a Number or a NumUnit The unit will be included at the end of the string for NumUnits e rnd n1 n2 optional n3 Returns a random number between n1 and n2 n3 is the step size i e the random number will be n1 k n3 for some integer k n3 defaults to 1 e rndu n1 n2 optional n3 u Returns a random NumUnit between n1 and n2 with unit u n3 is the step size e rndunit p1 p2 Returns a random unit prefix between the prefixes p1 and p
17. for students providing easy access to a potentially unlimited amount of practice questions in a broad range of subjects The system was evaluated by a first year physics class during first term Over second term two more sections of the first year physics course used the system and a third year pharmacology class used it for one assignment 1 3 Definitions Users are divided into two categories instructors and students Students can search for and practice questions and take assignments in the courses they are registered in Instructors can do everything students can do Additionally they can create question templates and assign tests in any courses they instruct They can view the assignments and marks of any students in their courses Question templates are used to generate random questions Variables in the question template are assigned random values resulting in a question Question Templates are made of one or more question template parts For instance a multi part question with parts A B and C would have three question template parts During question generation each question template 6 part generates a question part Questions and question parts can store a user s answers and marks Test templates are made up of multiple question templates and are used to generate tests Tests belong to a user and can store that user s overall mark 1 4 System Overview The users test scores and answers the templates for questions and t
18. given id from the database Each object stores variables corresponding to the attributes stored in the database Their Ids are 1 If they aren t saved to the database TestTemplate Summary Represents a test template Methods e ArrayList lt Test gt loadUserTests int userld Connection con Loads all the test instances of this test template started by the user with the given id and returns them in an ArrayList 42 e Test generate generates and returns a test using this test template To generate a test all questions that make up a test must be generated from their respective question templates This class also contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method Test Summary Represents a test Extends TestTemplate Methods e void addQuestions Question q Adds question q to the ArrayList of questions for this test e void submit Connection con sets the submit date to the current time and saves the test e saveMark Connection con int mark sets the user s mark to the given mark and saves that mark to the database This class also contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method QuestionTemplate Summary Represents a question template Methods e void addPart QuestionTemplatePart qtp adds qtp to the ArrayList of question template parts e void insertPart QuestionTemplatePart qtp PreparedStatement pstmt int qtid Saves qtp to the database with question te
19. viewing a student s test clearQuestion qnum Depending on the test type either clears the answers to all question parts for the question with number qnum or just the active question part Called when Clear is clicked saveQuestion qnum Saves user answers to all parts of the question with number qnum though Ajax requests to saveQuestion jsp The question header will say Save Successful when the save is completed successfully or Save Unsuccessful if an error occurred regenQuestion qnum Regenerates a new instance of the question with number qnum through an Ajax request to regenQuestion jsp Called when the retry button which appears for some test types is clicked or when the user clicks refresh for a question the instructor modified since the question was initially loaded The user s 39 answers are cleared and the user s marks for the question are reset to zero If the question was previously completely answered the total number of locks is decremented which may disallow test submission if all questions used to be answered e override qnum qpnum Hides the Override Mark button and shows the form inputs for an instructor to override the student s mark for question part qnum of question qnum Called when an instructor clicked an Override Mark button e setOverrideMark qnum qpnum Sets the initial value of the input for overriding a mark to be the user s current mark for that que
20. 2 both inclusive e setunit nu u Sets the unit of NumUnit nu to unit u e toprefix nu p Converts the unit prefix of NumUnit nu to prefix p and changes the value of nu accordingly e saqrt n returns the square root of n e Trigonometric Functions sin cos and tan take an angle in radians The inverse trig functions are prefixed with an a The degree equivalents of the trig and inverse trig functions end with a d 3 3 4 3 Statements Statements are expressions to be evaluated made up of constants variables binary operators and functions Operators are evaluated in accordance to B E D M A S rules with functions being evaluated before division and multiplication and variable assignment occurring last Parenthesis can change the order of evaluation Multiple statements separated by semi colons can be executed in one lt eqn gt tag The value returned from the last statement will be printed in the question For example lt eqn Sa cos Sb format Sa 2 gt will evaluate the cosine of Sb and assign the result to Sa Then it will print Sa rounded to two decimal places The parser is picky about white space White space is only permitted though not necessary after commas separating function parameters and semi colons separating statements A space is needed between the eqn and the first statement 20 3 3 4 4 Other Special Tags lt pic gt tags are used to embed uploaded pictures into questions The syntax is a
21. AutoEd An Online Assignment Generation and Marking System By Alyosha Pushak A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science Honours In The Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences Honours Computer Science Major Computer Science The University of British Columbia Okanagan April 2011 Alyosha Pushak 2011 Abstract AutoEd is an open source web based system that allows professors to give students assignments made of randomly generated questions The system was developed to improve student learning and provide students with easy access to a potentially unlimited amount of practice questions in a broad range of subjects as well as saving time for professors and TAs by auto marking assignments Professors create question templates from which random questions are generated Questions are written in HTML with special lt eqn gt tags that specify calculations and random variable assignment Numerical values and units can be randomized Students and professors can search for question templates by category and then try practice questions generated from those templates AutoEd provides immediate feedback to students and can provide hints as to what they did wrong and how to solve the question The server code written in Java handles the question generation and marking The templates and users tests answers and marks are stored in a database Table of C ontents
22. add or remove question parts you will have to create a copy of the question Click on create a copy to do so If you change the marks a question part is worth all user assignment scores will be updated to reflect the change A new field called refresh message is located at the end of the question template fields It consists of a check box for the option Refresh Active Questions and a text area both greyed out If you edit the question text or any part of a question part besides the marks the check box will no longer be greyed out The changes you made will only appear to users who start new attempts of the assignment after the changes are made Attempts started before the changes will not be changed However if you check the Refresh Active Questions check box any assignment questions the user has no marks for will be regenerated to reflect the question changes Any users who have marks for the modified questions will see a message at the start of the question saying the question has been changed and giving them the option to refresh the question to see the changes If they refresh the question however they will lose any answers and marks they had for that question You may also provide an additional message that will appear below the first by filling out the text area in the Refresh Message field This allows you to inform students if the change was minor and they don t need to refresh the question or if it was some
23. ages are cost and inflexibility The cost of these systems ranges from approximately 15 to 100 per student per course Given the large enrolments for classes that typically use these systems this is a cost most likely placed on the student rather than the institution Although both parties see a benefit students for learning the institution for reduced costs it is primarily supported by students who are resistant to increased costs Further it is challenging to create new questions in these systems and their costs force instructors to use them significantly in a course It is not cost effective to use them for a few questions that require specific repetitive practice or produce your own questions for use Another alternative is that most course management systems have built in support for quizzes and tests including some such as WebCT Vista 11 that have limited support for randomized questions If the institution has a course management system deployed then simple questions can be done this way We evaluated the support for randomized questions in WebCT Vista and 7 found them reasonable for basic questions but not acceptable for more detailed formula based questions Finally there have been several university led efforts on building these systems and providing access One such system is the Quest Service 12 at The University of Texas at Austin This system has questions for many sciences and outside institutions can get access by reques
24. blishing of question and test templates Once published the templates can be used by other instructors A new table in the database would be created for assignments Each assignment would point to a test template and course have an assigned and due date and an assignment type determining how questions are answered This way multiple assignments for different courses could use the same test template Once a template is published the original author cannot edit it as other instructors may be using it A copy must be made instead To publish a test template all question templates in the test must also be published We want to add the ability to search question templates by keyword Tags could be added to question templates which together with the question text and question part text would determine the search results A mobile version of the site for cell phone browsers is another planned feature Dr Andis Klergis asked how many of his students in BIOC 308 were practicing the online assignment While we do not currently keep track of this we could add this feature Every time a student answers a question in practice or an assignment we would record the student s id answer the question id and time Instructors could then view this data to see how many times 28 each student tries each question and get an idea of what common mistakes are made They could then add hints to the questions for those common mistakes During summer 2010
25. cision or a checkbox for allowing unit conversions needs to be added or removed addRow text Adds another row to the tbody of the question part currently being added Text is the text that appears in the left title column Returns a pointer to the td of the right column validateForm Validates form input before submitting the form and creating or modifying a question To be valid the following is required The question must have a name 34 e The question text question description and each question part text must be 2000 characters or less e Marks for each question must be an integer greater than 0 e Question parts with precisions must have an integer precision between 0 and 100 e All Question parts must have at least one correct answer Dialog js Summary Create custom dialog boxes Like the pop ups that appear with alert messages but customizable e Dialog width text Returns a Dialog object Width is the width of the dialog box and text is the header text This prepares the html elements for the dialog box but does not display the dialog box on the page e Dialog createTD Creates another row TR and TD element in the dialog box and returns the TD element for that row Rows are separated by lines Custom content can be displayed in the TDs e Dialog close Removes the dialog box from the page The html elements are preserved in the Dialog object so the dialog box can be reopened e Dialog show
26. cked The number of locked questions submitted true if the test was submitted assignment true if the test is an assignment Functions checkAnswer qpid answer Checks the answer for the question part with the id qpid The marking is done on the server by sending an AJAX request to markQuestion jsp Nothing is recorded in the database If the test is an assignment it checks the due date before marking the question and gives an alert message if the due date is passed If the session was lost either due to session timeout or the server was restarted the server responds saying the session was lost and an alert message informs the user that the session was lost and they will have to log in again A checkmark is displayed next to the answer if it is correct whereas a red ex appears if it is not This also displays the Show Hint button if a hint is available It ends by calling addmarks for the appropriate question so the question s marks and the marks in the test header are updated 38 format str returns the string str with all single quotes replaced with the right single quote special character reloadlmage id reloads the image with the given id Called when an image fails to load showHint hint id Shows the hint text hint in the element with the given id Called when the Show Hint button is pressed incLocks qnum locks the question with number qnum increases the total lock count and enabl
27. developed a formula editor to be used with the AutoEd system It allows users to type mathematical formula and symbols and have it displayed properly used the open source Mathdox Formula Editor developed at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven 5 as a base and tweaked it to suit our purposes also wrote a solver for it that can solve equations with functions like sine or log and even do unit conversions it can determine if the two terms in 2d 3a42 b 2c where a b c and d are units have equivalent units and can therefore be summed We plan on integrating this with AutoEd allowing students to show their work and based on that get partial marks for some questions Our goal is to continue developing the system and evaluate it in more courses and eventually release it as open source to the community Acknowledgements would like to thank Dr Ramon Lawrence my honours supervisor without whom would not have decided to pursue graduating with honours The project was his idea He created the first versions of the database schema and the question jar which modified and used as a base would like to thank Dr Teresa Wrzesniewski for evaluating the system in her first year Physics classes also owe thanks to Dr Ashraf Farahat Dr Andis Klergis and Dr Bulent Uyaniker who used AutoEd in their classes Finally I m grateful to all the students who tested the system and provided their feedback and were understanding of the tec
28. e 2011 02 08 20 19 2011 04 22 20 00 42 86 Start a New Attempt Practice this Test Past Assignments Example Assigament 2011 02 22 20 16 2011 03 01 20 00150 2011 02 08 20 16 2011 02 28 20 00 2011 02 01 19 53 2011 02 03 23 59 0 2010 09 14 18 02 2010 11 16 22 57 Figure 6 Assignment Attempts Welcome Test Studentl My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out One Part at a Time Assigned Date 2011 02 08 20 19 Due Date 2011 04 22 20 00 Total Time 00 31 Subm Try these questions A 28 39 B 35 20 What is the remainder in the following division problems A 48 divided by 5 3 Y B 25 divided by 24 2 x 3 marks 2 2 Solve these problems A 13 28 12W Ba 25 5 4 marks 1 1 Figure 7 Assignment 13 On the course assignments page click an assignment to view your attempts for that assignment along with your grade start time and submission time for each attempt Each attempt has its own set of questions and saves your answers and marks Only your attempt with the highest grade will count Click Start a New Attempt to begin an attempt Any answers you submit that are correct will be saved You can leave the page and your answers will be there when you return To resume an attempt where you left off click on the attempt in the list of attempts on the course assignment page You may not start new attempts once the due date
29. ed by a space Units are case sensitive If you forget to include units for a question that requires them you will be given a hint reminding you to include units If you provide the correct answer but the wrong units you will also be given a hint informing you so The marker can convert unit prefixes for example if the expected 11 answer is 1 1 m the answer 110 cm would be marked correct The instructor may disable unit conversions for a given question in which case the instructor should tell you in the question which units the answer expects For a full list of acceptable unit prefixes see section 3 3 4 5 There are three ways a question part may expect answers inputted as follows e Text A text box is provided for you to type the answer e Multiple Choice A list of possible answers is provided Click the radio button next to the answer you think is correct e Text with Solver Like the text option though this time a solve button appears next to the text box You may enter simple equations into the text editor beginning with the character Equations can use the following operators addition subtraction division multiplication and exponents You may use parenthesis to specify order of operation Clicking the solve button evaluates the expression you entered Expressions will also be evaluated when you click the submit button to have your answer graded 3 2 5 Practicing Tests Welcome
30. en ie 24 Table 1 Paper Vs Online neniateria en e a a aea i e eetet 27 Figure 13 Database Schema ns saioetara a aaa tradare aaee 32 1 Introduction 1 1 Motivation Assignment preparation and marking especially for first year classes with over a hundred students is very time consuming Automating this process can free up instructors and TAs time for more valuable student contact Online test systems can also be a resource for students to help them learn and provide more standardized evaluations of students and instructors While many such systems exist already most are not free Either the school or the students have to pay for them Many only allow static questions so there is no value in repeating the questions We decided to build our own system rather than use a pre existing system 1 2 Thesis Statement and Contributions The contribution of this thesis is the development and evaluation of the AutoEd assignment system The thesis is that the system will improve student performance and engagement in large classes AutoEd is a web based system for automated assignment generation and marking Instructors create question templates from which random questions are generated It is also a tool to help students learn As some values are randomized students can repeat a question with different values until they feel confident they know how to solve it The system provides students with immediate feedback The goal is to create a resource
31. es assignment submission if all questions are locked Locked questions can t have their answers edited markQuestion qnum Marks the question with number qnum Behaviour differs depending on the test type and whether or not the test is an assignment All answers are checked through calls to checkAnswer For assignments answers marks and whether or not the question is active is saved though AJAX requests to saveQuestion jsp For some test types incorrect answers do not save anything to the database lockQuestion qnum Locks the question with the given qnum It is different from incLocks in that it locks each answer input and displays a green check mark or red ex for each question part depending on if the user has marks for that question part whereas incLocks assumes these things have already happened It finished by calling incLocks qnum This is called to lock an inactive question when the page is initially loaded incLocks is called when a question is first locked because the user just submitted their answer to it partiallockQuestion qnum Used for test types that require the question parts to be answered one at a time in order Locks all the question parts that the user currently cannot answer or has already answered Will lock the entire question and call incLocks qnum if all the question parts are answered lockAll Locks all questions Called when viewing a submitted test a test passed the due date or when an instructor is
32. es whether or not this question is active This class also contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method QuestionTemplatePart Summary Represents a question template part Methods This class contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method QuestionPart Summary Represents a question part Extends QuestionTemplatePart Methods e QuestionPart QuestionTemplatePart qtp Constructor Generates this question part from the template qtp 44 e Regenerate QuestionTemplatePart qtp Regenerates this part using template qtp reloads with new random values e String mark String answer Marks the given answer with a call to markAnswer answer Sets the markedDate and the savedDate to the current date The results of marking are returned as a String e int getUnitsLoc String s Returns the start of the units in s Ignores the first E followed by a or a digit as that indicates scientific notation and is not a unit Returns the length of s if s contains no units e String extractUnits String s int unitLoc Extracts the units from s starting at unitLoc and returns them as a String e int extractint String s int unitLoc Extracts and returns an int from s ending at unitLoc e double extractDouble String s int unitLoc Extracts and returns a double from s ending at unitLoc Converts from scientific notation is s is of the form 2 1E 3 e String markAnswer String answer
33. ests and information on users and courses are stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database on a campus server cssql ok ubc ca The server code written in Java runs on another on campus server cs suse 4 ok ubc ca It handles the question generation and marking and interacts with the database The front end pages running client side are written in HTML and JavaScript and send Ajax requests to the server to mark questions and perform various other tasks without reloading the page Users interact with the system using a web browser The system was tested and works with Internet Explorer Version 7 Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome 2 Background The idea of question templates is not new One of the first systems produced was WWWAssign built by Dr Larry Martin for physics courses Initially freely released this system is no longer supported and has been replaced by the commercial product WebAssign 6 WebAssign has content and questions from multiple textbook publishers There are other similar commercial systems most often affiliated with textbook publishers including Aplia 7 mostly for social sciences Mastering Physics 8 Gradiance 9 computer science and Carnege Learning mathematics 10 The advantages of using these products are that the questions are completed and verified there may be questions associated with the course textbook and the web hosting is provided by the companies so no technical setup is required The disadvant
34. f pnum is given ans must be as well e ans The answer to save over the old answer for question part pnum Optional but must be provided if pnum is e mark The overall test mark to save over the current test mark Optional e deactivate Optional If set to anything the question num will be deactivated 41 RegenQuestion jsp Summary Send an Ajax request to this page to regenerate reload with new random values a question Parameters e tid The expected test id If the test in the session doesn t have this id the test is reloaded e num The number of the question to be regenerated e marks The total number of marks the question is worth sum of the marks for each question part UploadBean UploadBean is a Java component for uploading files from browsers 3 It handles our file upload requests to the database JavaCC JavaCC is a parser generator for Java 4 lt was used to generate the parser for evaluating lt eqn gt tag expressions Question jar All class representing an object that gets saved to the database templates questions tests etc have a save Connection con and load int id Connection con method Save saves the object to the database along with any objects that belong to that object for instance saving a question saves all its question parts If it s not already inserted into the database it will insert it Save returns the id of the object Load will load the object with the
35. h Questions page see section 3 3 1 When viewing a question you will see a page as shown in Figure 4 Questions have a question header which shows the question name your marks and the total marks for the question and submit and clear buttons Below is the text for the question Questions have one or more questions parts to them each of which requires an answer When you have answered all the question parts click the submit button to have your answers graded You may submit answers as many times as you want Green check marks will appear next to correct answers whereas red exes indicate incorrect answers The clear button will clear your answers to each question part Refreshing the page will load a new instance of the question with different values For some incorrect answers a Show Hint button will appear Click the button to view a hint 3 2 4 Entering Answers In this section we discuss the format in which answers are entered e Numerical Values decimal answers within a given tolerance of the correct answer are accepted The default tolerance is 2 though the instructor may set it to 0 in which case the exact numerical value is needed For integer values the exact value is usually required unless the instructor sets up the answer as a decimal answer e Scientific Notation You may use scientific notation of the form 6 1E 5 e Units Some answers require units Units follow the numerical value which may or may not be separat
36. h that ca_id e cats An array of categories indexed by ca_id e dia The dialog box e display The div in the dialog box displaying the categories e divs An array of divs containing a group of sibling categories Functions e Category name id pid Returns a Category object Name is the category name id is the ca_id and pid is the pca_id parent id Pid is n for no parent e addCategory name id pid Creates a Category object with name id and pid and adds it to the cats array and the appropriate location in the categories array e displayCategories Opens the dialog box displaying the categories Will create the dialog box dia if it was not already created When initially opened all root categories will be displayed with no categories expanded e insertCategory id div Adds the category with the given name to the given div Div should be a div containing a group of sibling categories The character for showing the children categories of the category will be added to the end of the div if the category has any children along with the category name e expand id Expands or closes the category with the given id showing or hiding all its children categories depending on if it s currently expanded If this is the first time expanding the category a div will be created that holds all the children categories and added below the parent category The div has 20 pixels of padding on the left to inden
37. haracters e Courses The courses you instruct appear here Check the courses you want this question to belong to Students in those courses can then see and practice this question e Text The text for this question Written in HTML with special lt eqn gt tags to specify calculations and random variable assignment See the section 3 3 4 for details on the syntax for lt eqn gt tags 17 e Description A description of the question It appears with the question template in search results e Category The category of this question Question Template Part Fields e Marks The amount of marks awarded for a correct answer to this question part Must be an integer greater than 0 e Question Type Determines the input used for the answer Must be one of the following o Text the answer is entered in a text box o Text with Solver the answer is entered in a text box Computations beginning un with an can be evaluated when the answer is submitted or when the solve button is pressed For more information on the solver see page 36 in the appendix Multiple Choice The answer is selected from a list of possible answers Answers entered in the Incorrect Answers field will appear as possible answers e Answer Type Determines how the answer is interpreted by the marker Must be one of the following O O O O 000000 Text answer is matched against a string case insensitive Text
38. hnical errors encountered 29 Appendix Table of Contents Database AAA A E A A NA 32 JavaScript A A Ssi S ii Sson SEn E EEEE 33 HelperFUnctON S usaras dt toria a e e aea 33 A A ROS 33 A O A A a n Mauss Maeived 35 TL IS A OR 35 MiNISO VET data Sages Sh adios 36 A A NN 37 VOTAN At A A ETE SEEE Ada 38 PIOUAP A a O ee Rn 40 AA NN 40 Java Files u ne enn aca ee 41 CAC A A A A A EON 41 MarkQuestion E S S A E E A TA EE E EET 41 SaveQ EsStio m ii a a RA ANES 41 Regen QUestiondsp re A A E EA E T cosets 42 MOA A A E A E lee bin ecasaocennan 42 ENEE E E E A A E AA A EE A E 42 A nenne seen een nehmer 42 A O A EA 42 VO A da 43 30 QuestionTemplate QuestionTemplatePart 31 Database Schema uid int u_login varchar 10 u_name varchar 100 u_password varchar 20 u_type smallint cid int c_num varchar 10 c_year smallint c_term tinyint c_name varchar S0 c_sect smallint g tt_id int id int id tt_name varchar 100 tt marks int tt_attempts int tt_assignedDate datetime tt_dueDate datetime cid int tt_text nvarchar 2000 tt_type smallint Figure 13 Database Schema q name varchar 100 q_numParts int q_className varchar 150 q_text nvarchar 2000 q_desc nvarchar 2000 q_creationDate datetime q_attemptNum int q_isActive bit num int es varchar 100 32 JavaScript Files HelperFunctions js Summary Provides helper functions for c
39. is passed If you open an attempt after the due date you may view your attempt but you won t be able to change your answers There are different types of assignments as follows e All at Once Like when practicing questions and tests all parts of a question are marked at once Once you submit your answers you may not change them however you may retry another instance of the question with different random values as many times as you like by clicking retry in the question header The number of times you try each question is listed in the question header This is the only type of assignment with a retry button e One ata Time You submit answers to one question part at a time In a question with multiple parts you must answer the previous part correctly before moving on to the next part You may submit answers as many times as you like The inputs for the question parts you cannot answer are greyed out e One Chance Only one attempt is allowed and you may only submit your answers once All parts of a question are marked together Be sure to answer each question part before clicking submit for that question Once you ve answered all of the questions you may submit your assignment by clicking submit on the right side of the assignment header You will still get your grade if you don t click submit The assignment submission is to give the instructor an indication of how many students completed the assignment and when
40. ke o One Chance All parts of a question are marked at once Students can only submit their answers once and may only attempt the test once 22 e Header Text Here you can type a message that appears at the top of the test when students practice or attempt the test This field is optional Selecting Test Questions On the right you ll see the list of questions you ve created with check boxes next to them On the left is a blank column with a red arrow The questions that make up the test will be listed here The red arrow shows where questions will be inserted into the test Click the check box next to a question on the right and it will appear on the left where the red arrow indicates Un checking a question on the right will remove it from the list on the left In the left column the order questions are listed is the order they will appear in on the test Clicking and dragging a question allows you to change their order Clicking to the left a question will move the red arrow changing where questions will be inserted 3 3 7 Modifying Assignments and Their Questions To modify a practice test or assignment on the course assignments page click Modify next to the test name Once a test is assigned only the test name due date and header text may be changed When modifying a question that is part of an assignment a message will appear at the top of the page stating that the question is part of an assignment and if you wish to
41. ling animation and Ajax interactions 2 The Flot API requires Query Asides from the page using Flot jQuery was not used 40 Java Files Header jsp Summary Contains methods for printing the header that appears at the top of each page and the course header appearing below the header on all course pages There are two versions of each method one with a String path parameter for passing the path to the directory containing header jsp The other with no path arguments assumes we already in the correct directory Printing the course header requires the course id as an argument MarkQuestion jsp Summary Send an Ajax request to this page to mark an answer Parameters e mytext The answer to be graded e num The question number followed by the question part number separated by an underscore e tid The expected test id If the test in the session does not have this id the test is reloaded Can be null when marking for a practice test or question that is not saved in the database SaveQuestion jsp Summary Send an Ajax request to this page to save data to the database The data saved depends on the parameters Parameters e tid The expected test id If the test in the session does not have this id the test is reloaded e num The number of the question to save Optional e pnum The number of the question part to save Optional If num is provided and pnum is not all parts of the question are saved I
42. ltiplication operator on the stack This can happen in cases such as 4 5 2 If our parsed character is a and the last object on the stack was an operator or a we append the to the number string making the next number a negative number When we parse an operator we may be able to evaluate part of the expression If the operator we parse has precedence lower than the last operator we parsed we start popping objects off the stack and evaluate them until we reach an operator with precedence less than that of the operator we just parsed Then we push the resulting number from our evaluation onto the stack followed by the operator we just parsed For example if we parsed 3 5 612 once we see the second we know we can evaluate the 5 612 After evaluation our stack will have 3 180 If we parse a we first check our number string If it is equal to we push a 1 on the stack and empty the number string Next we call checkInvisibleTimes The we evaluate off the top of the stack until we encounter a White space is allowed between numbers and operators lf we parse a character we don t know what to do with that character is assumed to be the start of the units parsing is stopped and we evaluate everything on the stack Question js Summary An abstract class representing a question part There are different question classes for the different types of question parts text multiple choice
43. ment that replaces the lt pic gt tag and gives the image an onerror event which reloads the image identified by its id when it doesn t load properly To use an updated question jar tomcat has to be restarted When tomcat restarts it erases everyone s session Anyone who was doing a test at the time would suddenly find all their answers being marked incorrect To fix this whenever a question is marked we check if the session was lost If it was the user is informed via an alert box that their session was lost and they ll have to re login During the 3 online assignment for Phys 112 in term 1 we noticed some students who submitted their test had less than 100 As the assignment required all questions to be answered correctly before moving on this should have been impossible In fact we observed 25 test scores changing after the student submitted the test sometimes days later The grades were 100 when they submitted and changed afterwards Fortunately grades were recoverable only the overall test score was altered the marks for each question part were preserved so the overall test mark could be recovered by summing the individual question part marks wrote a java function to do this later found a case where a student s answers and marks were overwritten for one question which was disturbing as the marks can t be recovered in such a case The student has submitted her assignment so gave her 100 determined that if
44. mplate id set to qtid Called by save Connection con e Question generate generates a question from this template Question generation involves generating all of the question s question parts from their respective question template parts This class also contains various getter and setter methods and a toString method 43 Question Summary Represents a question Extends QuestionTemplate Methods e Question QuestionTemplate qt Constructor Generates this question from the template qt by calling generateFromQT qt Question text is evaluated here e generateFromQT QuestionTemplate qt Generates this question from template qt Question text for each question part is evaluated here Do not use this method by itself to generate a question Use the above constructor e void saveAnswers Connection con saves answers to all of the question parts via calls to saveAnswer e void saveAnswer int partNum Connection con saves the answer to question part number partNum Part numbers start at 1 e String mark int partNum String answer Marks the answer for question part partNum Saves nothing to the database The result of the marking is returned as a String which will include any hints if there are any e int regenerate Connection con Regenerates this question reloads with new random values Save the question to the database and returns the question id e saveActive Connection con boolean isActive Sav
45. nter to the element with id table for later use which is the table all the form elements are in Assignment is true if the question is in an assignment e doneLoad editing Call this after all question data is loaded via addPart Editing is true for the modifying questions page e format str formats the string stored in the database to the form it s displayed in on the webpage It converts lt quote gt to and lt line gt to line breaks e adjustButtonPositions It s a hack to keep the red X buttons positioned on the left side of the header bar for each question part while keeping the text in the center of the bar It doesn t work in IE so it isn t called for IE leaving the text on the left instead of the center It s also not called if the question is in an assignment as there are no X buttons 33 in that case as question parts cannot be deleted It s called every 20 milliseconds to reposition the buttons correctly if the elements are stretched or the page is resized change Called when the user changes a value in a question part other than marks This will cause the existing questions parts to be written over in the database The changes will only show in questions generated after the changes are saved changeMarks Called when the user changes the marks for one of the question parts This will trigger a recalculation of all the user s marks for questions generated from this template once the changes are sa
46. ow displays the course name and number Second are links to the assignments page and the questions page Third is course information the term section number and instructor name 3 2 2 Assignments Page Welcome Test Studentl My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out TEST 101 Test Course Term Winter 1 Sect 001 Instructor Alyosha Pushak Test Name Assigned Date Due Date Grade Active Assignments 2011 02 08 20 19 2011 04 22 20 00 Past Assignments Example Assignment 2011 04 06 22 06 201 an 22 00 0 EEE nm zu AS Ot 50 Figure 3 Assignments Page When you click on a course from My Courses you will be brought to the course s assignments page A table of assignments and practice tests is shown here listing active assignments first then past assignments and lastly practice tests Active assignments with nearer due dates appear first The assignment name due date assigned date and your grade for each assignment is listed For practice tests only the name of the test is listed 10 3 2 3 Practicing Questions Welcome Demo Student My Courses My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out Figure 4 Practice Question On the questions page within a course you will see all the questions for that course along with the question s category Click on a question s name to practice an instance of that question You may also search for questions to practice from the Searc
47. reating form elements and some IE Internet Explorer workarounds e getElementsByName name tag If the user s browser is IE this function is added to the document It returns an array of all elements of the given tag type with the given name If tag is undefined it will return elements of any tag type This function isn t added for browsers other than IE as they already have this function e setEvent element event f Adds an event to the given element Event is the trigger and f is name of the function called by that trigger Adding events is easy in browsers other than IE so this is really an IE workaround e createlnput type name size maxlength Creates and returns an input element of the given type name size and max length Size and max length are optional parameters e createButton html onClick className name Creates and returns a button element Html is the inner html onClick is the function triggered by clicking the button Class name and class are optional e addOption select text value Adds an option to the given select element with the given value Text is the text that appears in the drop down menu e selectOption select value Selects the option with the given value in the given select element QCreator js Summary Provides functionality for the question creating and modifying pages e initQCreator assignment Call this before using other functions from this script It just stores a poi
48. s follows lt pic user tagname gt where user is the username of the user who uploaded the image and tagname is the image s tag name For information on uploading files and setting tag names see section 3 3 8 The first lt _ gt tag encountered in a question part indicates where the input for entering answers in placed If no lt _ gt tag is found the input will be appended to the end of the question part text 3 3 4 5 Unit Prefixes The accepted unit prefixes the marker can do unit conversions with are listed here along with their value when converted to base no prefix units e G 1049 e M 10 6 e k 1043 e 1 e d 1 e c 01 e m 104 3 e uy 104 6 you may type u in place of u e n 104 9 e p 104 12 e f 104 15 3 3 5 Assignments and Practice Tests There are two types of tests practice tests and assignments Practice tests have no assigned or due date are not worth marks can be practiced endlessly by students and do not record any information when students practice them Assignments have an assigned and due date are worth marks and record the student s answers to the questions Assignments may be practiced like practice tests There are restrictions on which parts of assignments can be modified once it is assigned discussed in the next section A practice test can be assigned making it an assignment Assignments cannot be unassigned only deleted
49. signments except the second The median was 100 each time for the online assignments This is because students could try answering a question until they got it right so most students tried for 100 27 A common complaint was the issue of incorrect marking for some answers This was either because the formula for the answer was encoded incorrectly or more commonly due to issues with precision and rounding This was fixed in most cases by increasing the tolerance for accepted answers For some poorly constructed questions rounding values part way through calculations could lead to very different results 6 Conclusions AutoEd is a valuable teaching tool that can help students learn and dramatically reduce time spent marking assignments especially in large first year classes Most of the first year physics students who evaluated the system prefer using it to written assignments Students especially like the immediate feedback when they submit an answer They like being able to continue trying to answer a question until they get it right 7 Future Work Several ideas and plans were made over the course of the development that due to time constraints could not be implemented plan to implement these features over the summer Currently a copy of a question template must be made for an instructor other than the question template s author to use the template in a test and test templates cannot be shared across courses The idea is to allow pu
50. stion part For some reason changing the value when the input is first appended to the document in override doesn t work Calling this function a millisecond after override does e doOverride qnum qpnum Saves the overrided mark and answer to question part qpnum of question qnum and the new overall test mark through an Ajax request to saveQuestion jsp Hides the form inputs for changing the mark and brings back the Override Mark button and changes the user marks in the question header and the test header e addMarks qnum Sums the user s marks for each question part of question qnum and updates the marks in the question and test headers accordingly e scrollToNum num Scrolls the question with number num Called when a question number is clicked in the test header e calcTime time id displays the time in the form mm ss in the element with the given id Time is the time to be displayed in seconds e keepTime Keeps track of the total time the user spends on the page and updates the time shown in the test header every second through calls to calcTime Timing stops when all questions are locked The time starts at O each time the page is loaded Flot API Flot is an open source JavaScript plotting library 1 It was used for creating the graphs of assignment data on the View Results page jQuery Query is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversion event hand
51. t the list of children For subsequent expansions the div is reinserted below the parent The div will be restored to the same state it was in when removed so children categories that were expanded will remain expanded When closing a category the div with its children is removed Called when a or character is clicked e chooseCategory id Selects the category with the given id Closes the dialog box and fills the textbox with id category with the selected category name Called when a category name is clicked MiniSolver js Summary A simple calculator than can solve equations made of binary operations A numbers and parenthesis It is a simplified version of a solver wrote in summer 2010 for another project 36 The Algorithm We begin parsing the equation string from the left We have a stack called parse onto which we push numbers and operators If the character we are parsing is a number or a we append to a string called number If not we call pushNumber This converts the string in number to a number and pushes it on the parsed stack then sets the string number to an empty string If the string number could not be converted to a number it throws an error Any parsing errors terminate the parsing and send an alert message to the user describing the error Before pushing the number on the stack we call checklInvisibleTimes If the previous object on the stack was a number this will push a mu
52. tent To fix the issue whenever something will be saved to the database we first check that the correct test is in the session If not we reload it The expected test id is stored in the JavaScript and sent to the server with all Ajax requests to check against the session s test s id Sometimes the formula for correct answers was incorrectly entered into the question template and not caught before the question went into an assignment The system then rejected student s answers when they were correct Some of the students this happened to of course found this frustrating When this happened it was usually caught and fixed within a day or two Students who tried the question before it was fixed would have to reload the question and redo any question parts they had already answered Most students were very understanding about this Questions sometimes expected the answer to be more precise than the answer the student gave requiring more significant figures then it should Precision was changed from 1 to 2 for later assignments to avoid this problem 26 5 Results and Feedback Results were overall very positive In Dr Teresa Wrzesniewski s PHYS 112 class during term 1 students were given two written assignments two online assignments using AutoEd and a final assignment which they could choose to do on paper or online The online assignment questions were the same as those for the written assignment but with some values randomized In a
53. thing they should refresh the question for such as an answer being incorrect which is now fixed 23 3 3 8 Uploading Files mg Liang mm T E VENIS pn fm a A E S _ u EI Sm mg 7 CT CTI _ ___ Tcspacn fmsgepag 8223 byes 011 0125 220840 5 mg Jooocave S 464 yes 2011 03 28 160619 submarinepng submarine fimagetpng 10708 bytes 2011 03 28 18 06 19 a lmbpng Mb mens 698 bytes 2011 03 28 18 06 19 a lerossedWirespng crossed Img TIGO bytes 2 2011 02 20 154838 jsuspendedConductorpag codo image png 43S bytes 2011 02 20154838 Upload Fil Save Tag Names Select All Delete Selected No file chosen s suse 4 0k ubc ca autoeduloadFile jsp up_id 1398459350 Figure 12 File Upload From the My Files page instructors can upload files Clicking Upload Another allows you to upload multiple files at once Up to 10 files can be uploaded at once Once you ve chosen your files click Upload to begin uploading When the upload is complete you should see your newly uploaded files added to the list of files To give a file a tag name click on the file s tag name in the tag name column and type a name in the text box that appears n a indicates that a file has no tag name This is the default for new uploads Once you ve typed tag names for your files click Save Tag Names You can use an image s tag name to embed it in a question Clicking on a file
54. ting UT Austin accounts LON CAPA 13 is an open source system built primarily at Michigan State University It has hundreds of thousands of resources and questions that are shared by multiple institutions Institutions are part of a sharing network for distributing questions and resources However they do not release questions outside of the institutions using the system or to students so students cannot acquire the answers We wanted to build a system where anyone including students could access the questions There has been some informal evidence that these systems have improved efficiency especially for large first year classes and student learning and educational outcomes Students enjoy the immediate response of the system and overall performance on tests and lectures have improved 3 User Manual 3 1 General View 3 1 1 Logging In On the main page at cs suse 4 ok ubc ca autoedu you must log in before you can continue Students default username and password are their student number You can log into a demo student account with user name and password demo 3 1 2 My Courses Welcome Teresa Wrzesniewski My Courses My Questions My Files Search Questions Contact Us Log Out Course List PHYS 122 Introductory Physics II Term Winter 2 Sect 001 Instructor Teresa Wrzesniewski Figure 1 My Courses Once you log in you will be directed to the My Courses page It lists the courses you are registered in
55. ved which could change their marks on tests that contains those questions addAnswer num answer Adds another input element for entering another correct answer to question part num If answer is defined that answer will be put in the input element as is the case when loading the initial question data on the modify question page removeAnswer qnum anum Removes the input element for a correct answer Anum is the answer number qnum is the question part number If that question part has only one correct answer it does nothing as question parts must have at least one correct answer addHint num answer hint Adds form elements for adding another incorrect answer with a hint to a question part Num is the question part number answer and hint are the initial values entered in the form elements removeHint qnum anum Removes form inputs for incorrect answer and hint anum from question part qnum addPart qpmarks qptype qpprec qptext answers wrongAns hints uconv Adds another tbody containing form elements for entering another question part The parameters are the initial values for the question part removePart num Removes the tbody containing all the form elements for question part num If there s only one question part it does nothing as all questions must have at least one question part addPrecision num Called when the answer type of a question part is changed It checks if an input element for pre
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