A hint which asks questions with correct answers

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1

Matt wrote an exercise with a hint, and the hint includes some questions for students to respond to. I am now thinking about how the grading will behave. It would seem that as is, students would have to get the questions in the hint correct to get full credit for the problem, but what if they know how to do it, get the graph correct, and never open the hint?

I thought of a couple ways to address this: 1) take the hint content out of the <hint> element so it’s just visible all the time, or 2) use conditional content so that the hint only exists while the credit for the graph is not =1. I am leaning toward the latter, but will that work like I think it will?

This is how I’m hoping it would work, but I wanted to see if I understood. For example, on this problem, Exercise 1.4.4.2: Sketching the derivative of a piecewise linear function there appear to me to be 10 answers while the hint exists, and 8 if the hint doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t want students to get 8/10 on the problem if they never open the hint, so that’s what I’m trying to fix. But if I make the hint conditional on not having full credit on the graph, if they are doing the problem in order, they might have 6/10, then they complete the hint and so they have 8/10, and then if they get the graph right would their score become 7/8?

I know you said you don’t recommend using conditionalContent that contains answers, but I’m wondering if it’s okay in this direction where answers disappear, rather than in the direction that more answers appear because of conditionalContent.

2

What I do in this situation is set the answer to be worth zero: <answer weight="0" />. Then it won’t matter one way or the other (even if they got it incorrect). The green check is just for their info.

3

Ah, thank you! Turns out, Matt had that in his source already, so I was worried for nothing.

If I make weight=2, would it make a part of a problem worth twice as much as otherwise? Can weight=1/2?

4

That’s right. By default each answer, problem, etc. has weight="1". You can specify any non-negative number to change one component’s weight relative to the others.

Side note: When you start getting into weights, it’s a bit of a can of worms. But, if you are trying to have more control over relative weights, there are multiple special cases that most people probably want to ignore.

  • When you add a sectionWideCheckWork to a section (or other component), then that section as a unit now gets a weight (defaults to 1). This means a sectionWideCheckWork typically decreases the weight of the section’s enclosed answers, as they now have an effective weight of 1/N, where N is the number of answers in that section. To maintain the relative weighting to how they were before you added a sectionWideCheckWork, you can give that section a weight of N.

  • Giving a section (or other non-answer component) a weight without sectionWideCheckWork or aggregateScores (which is implied by sectionWideCheckWork) doesn’t do anything.

  • A problem or exercise defaults to aggregrateScores being set.