REAL

Yggdrasil: a test question editor with symbolic expression support in high-throughput multi-language education

Makra, Péter and Égerházi, László and Bari, Ferenc (2018) Yggdrasil: a test question editor with symbolic expression support in high-throughput multi-language education. GRADUS, 5 (2). pp. 381-390. ISSN 2064-8014

[img]
Preview
Text
2018_2_CSC_026_Makra.pdf

Download (883kB) | Preview

Abstract

When preparing test questions for a large population of students, one usually needs to reconcile two conflicting factors: on one hand, the variability, and on the other hand, the consistent difficulty of questions. Random selection from a large pool of unrelated questions does ensure variability, but at the cost of comparable difficulty. One way to provide balanced difficulty is to create templates with variants that may differ in numeric values or relevant phrases, or may simply employ negation. Experience shows us, though, that manual variant management is as cumbersome as it is error-prone. In this paper, we shall introduce a program we wrote in C# to address this problem. The program, Yggdrasil, supports the creation of templates with text-valued, logical or numeric symbolic expressions, manages their interdependence in an internal context and produces an output where the expressions are replaced by individual variants. The templates are easy to import into computer-assisted translation tools, allowing the translation of the templates themselves instead of the high number of variants. At the moment, Yggdrasil can provide xml output for the CooSpace learning management system used by the University of Szeged or LATEX files for a printable pdf, but to increase availability, we plan to implement Word docx output.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: tests, question variants, symbolic expressions, C#
Subjects: L Education / oktatás > L1 Education (General) / oktatás általában
Q Science / természettudomány > QA Mathematics / matematika > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science / számítástechnika, számítógéptudomány
Depositing User: Zoltán Subecz
Date Deposited: 15 Jun 2020 13:08
Last Modified: 03 Apr 2023 06:49
URI: http://real.mtak.hu/id/eprint/109709

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item