Package 'exams2forms'

R/exams Interface for Forms in R/Markdown or Quarto Documents

Description

The exams2forms interface can be used within R/Markdown or Quarto documents to dynamically insert individual questions or entire quizzes based on R/exams exercise templates.

Usage

exams2forms(file,
  write = TRUE, check = TRUE, box = TRUE, solution = TRUE, nchar = c(20, 100),
  schoice_display = "buttons", mchoice_display = "buttons",
  cloze_schoice_display = "dropdown", cloze_mchoice_display = mchoice_display,
  usecase = TRUE, usespace = TRUE,
  n = 1L, nsamp = NULL, dir = ".", edir = NULL, tdir = NULL, sdir = NULL, verbose = FALSE,
  quiet = TRUE, resolution = 100, width = 4, height = 4, svg = FALSE,
  converter = "pandoc-mathjax", base64 = NULL, ...)

Arguments

file	character. A specification of (a list of) exercise files.
write	logical. Should writeLines be called on the resulting Markdown/HTML text?
check	logical. Should a check for showing the answer be added to the exercise?
box	logical. Should a box be added around the check environment?
solution	logical or character. Should the solution environment of the R/exams exercises (if any) be displayed or not? Optionally, solution can also be a character with the title for the corresponding solution box.
nchar	numeric. Number of characters for numeric or string fields (forms_num, forms_string). If a vector of length 2 is provided it is used as the minimum and maximum number of characters, respectively.
schoice_display, mchoice_display, cloze_schoice_display, cloze_mchoice_display	character. Should the interaction for single-choice or multiple-choice forms be displayed with buttons (radio buttons or checkboxes, respectively) or with drop-down menus? The default is to use buttons for single-choice and multiple-choice items and for multiple-choice interactions within cloze items. Only for single-choice interactions within cloze items, the default is to use drop-down menus.
usespace	logical. Defaults to TRUE, only used for string questions. If FALSE spaces are ignored when evaluating correct answers.
usecase	logical. Defaults to TRUE, only used for string questions. If FALSE answers are evaluated ignoring uppercase/lowercase.
n	integer. The number of copies to be taken from file.
nsamp	integer. The number(s) of exercise files sampled from each list element of file. Sampling without replacement is used if possible. (Only if some element of nsamp is larger than the length of the corresponding element in file, sampling with replacement is used.)
dir	character. Standard argument for exams interfaces and hence included in the argument - but actually not used because exams2forms does not write output files.
edir	character specifying the path of the directory (along with its sub-directories) in which the files in file are stored.
tdir	character specifying a temporary directory, by default this is chosen via tempfile. Note that this is cleaned up (i.e., existing files are deleted) and only certain temporary files are preserved.
sdir	character specifying a directory for storing supplements, by default this is chosen via tempfile.
verbose	logical. Should information on progress of exam generation be reported?
quiet	logical. Should output be suppressed when calling xweave?
resolution, width, height	numeric. Options for rendering PNG (or SVG) graphics passed to xweave.
svg	logical. Should graphics be rendered in SVG or PNG (default)?
converter	passed on to make_exercise_transform_html (if markup = "html").
base64	logical. Should supplementary files be embedded using Base 64 coding? Passed on to make_exercise_transform_pandoc. The default is to enable Base 64 when an HTML-type document is produced.
...	currently not used.

Details

exams2forms provides an interface for including exercises from R/exams (https://www.R-exams.org/) in R/Markdown or Quarto documents. This is done by rendering the exercises (either in .Rnw or .Rmd format) into Markdown which can then be included in .Rmd or .qmd documents.

The function exams2webquiz can set up a suitable .Rmd file and directly render it. This is intended mostly for quick interactive testing when authoring R/exams exercises.

The idea and original code for inserting interactions into R/Markdown documents along with CSS and Javascript is adapted from the webexercises package, authored by Dale Barr and Lisa DeBruine.

Value

A list of exercises, each of which is a character vector with the Markdown code of the individual exercises.

See Also

exams2webquiz, xexams, xweave

Examples

## Example R/exams exercise: string, num, schoice, mchoice
exams2forms("function.Rmd")
exams2forms("deriv.Rmd")
exams2forms("swisscapital.Rmd")
exams2forms("switzerland.Rmd")

## Usually exams2forms() is used within R/Markdown or Quarto tutorials,
## two example files are shipped within the package.
## - questions.Rmd: all questions set up indvidually
## - quiz.Rmd: an entire quiz set up in one go
lr <- system.file("forms", package = "exams2forms")
dir(lr)

## The quiz.Rmd file is rather short and straightforward.
rmd <- file.path(lr, "quiz.Rmd")
writeLines(readLines(rmd))

## Not run: 
## Either .Rmd file can be loaded in RStudio and render from there or
## using the command line, e.g.,
rmarkdown::render(rmd)

## End(Not run)

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Setting Up and Running Simple Web Quizzes with R/exams Exercises

Description

The exams2webquiz function is a convenience tool that sets up an R/Markdown document embedding R/exams exercises in a (temporary) directory and directly rendering it to an HTML page.

Usage

exams2webquiz(file, n = 1L, nsamp = NULL, dir = NULL,
  name = "webquiz", title = "R/exams quiz", browse = TRUE, edir = NULL,
  ..., clean = TRUE, quiet = TRUE, envir = parent.frame())

webquiz(...)

Arguments

file	character. A specification of (a list of) exercise files.
n	integer. The number of copies to be taken from file.
nsamp	integer. The number(s) of exercise files sampled from each list element of file. Sampling without replacement is used if possible. (Only if some element of nsamp is larger than the length of the corresponding element in file, sampling with replacement is used.)
dir	character. A path in which the tutorial file is created, by default chosen as a tempfile.
name	character. A name prefix for the resulting .Rmd document.
title	character. Title of the quiz.
browse	logical. Should the resulting tutorial be displayed using browseURL?
edir	character. The path of the directory (along with its sub-directories) in which the files in file are stored. If both dir and edir are NULL (the default), the edir is set to the current working directory.
...	arguments passed to exams2forms (in exams2webquiz) or html_document (in webquiz), respectively.
clean, quiet, envir	arguments passed to render.

Details

exams2webquiz is a convenience function that sets up a .Rmd document (in a temporary directory by default) and then calls render from rmarkdown to quickly try out the quiz interactively.

webquiz is a small wrapper function that creates an html_document but includes some custom CSS and Javascript for the quiz display and user interactions. The idea and original code is adapted from the webexercises package, authored by Dale Barr and Lisa DeBruine.

For full customization it is recommended to set up a dedicated .Rmd file within which exams2forms can be used to include R/exams exercises.

Value

Invisible character vector containing the path of the Rmd document and rendered HTML file, respectively.

See Also

exams2forms, render

Examples

## Not run: 
## quickly render a quiz based on a set of R/exams exercises
ex <- c("swisscapital.Rmd", "capitals.Rmd", "fruit.Rmd", "function.Rmd", "lm2.Rmd")
exams2webquiz(ex)

## End(Not run)

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Create Interaction Forms for Different Exercise Types

Description

Helper functions for exams2forms to create the interaction forms for different R/exams exercise types: single-choice (schoice), multiple-choice (mchoice), text (string), or numeric (num).

Usage

forms_schoice(answerlist, solution, display = c("buttons", "dropdown"))

forms_mchoice(answerlist, solution, display = c("buttons", "dropdown"))

forms_string(answer, width = NULL, usecase = TRUE, usespace = FALSE, regex = FALSE)

forms_num(answer, tol = 0, width = NULL, usespace = FALSE, regex = FALSE)

Arguments

answerlist	character vector of answer alternatives for a single-choice or multiple-choice answer.
solution	logical vector indicating which alternatives in answerlist are correct. Must have the same length as answerlist. For forms_schoice exactly one element of solution must be TRUE.
display	character. Should the interaction for single-choice or multiple-choice forms be displayed with buttons (radio buttons or checkboxes, respectively) or with drop-down menus?
answer	character (for forms_string) or numeric (for forms_num). Correct answer(s).
width	numeric. Width of the input box in characters. Defaults to the length of answer.
usecase	logical. Should the evaluation of the input be case-sensitive?
usespace	logical. Should the evaluation of the input assess white spaces?
regex	logical. Should the evaluation of the input employ regular expressions?
tol	numeric. Tolerance for the evaluation of numeric input.

Value

A character string with the HTML or Markdown code for the interaction forms to be embedded in R/Markdown or Quarto documents.

Examples

## single-choice: What is the third letter of the latin alphabet?
forms_schoice(c("A", "B", "C", "D"), c(FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE))

## multiple-choice: Which of these numbers are prime?
forms_mchoice(c("1", "2", "3", "4"), c(FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE))

## string: Which base R function estimates linear regression models?
forms_string("lm", width = 10)

## numeric: A population of 1000 grows with a nominal rate of 10% per period.
## How big is the population after three periods?
forms_num(1000 * exp(0.1 * 3), tol = 0.1, width = 10)

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