Forum: support

RE: essay question imnmoodle: maximal number of characters [ Reply ] By: Nikolaus Umlauf on 2022-09-22 11:47	[forum:49440]
We now added support for exextra[essay_wordlimit,numeric]. You can either provide only one number, which then sets <maxwordlimit></maxwordlimit> in the Moodle XML, or two numbers. Then the first sets <minwordlimit></minwordlimit> and the second the <maxwordlimit>.

RE: essay question imnmoodle: maximal number of characters [ Reply ]
By: Achim Zeileis on 2022-08-08 15:34

[forum:49430]

I also had to look this up and it turns out that the maxchars option is not employed by exams2moodle because Moodle XML has no support for it (unlike QTI XML).

Alternatively, one could set <minwordlimit> and <maxwordlimit> in Moodle XML. However, this does not really enforce that these limits are actually fulfilled. The only consequence (that was immediately visible to me) is that _after_ hitting "Save" for such an essay question it is displayed what the number of words entered is and whether this conforms with the limits or not. Thus, you can still save and exit the question with an answer that is either too short or too long.

My interpretation is that it will be most important to _explain_ to the participants which answers are acceptable and that excessive (and/or insufficient) answer will lead to a deduction of points. Such an explanation could be both in the exercise itself and in the announcement of the exam.

I'll discuss with Niki whether we should add exextra[essay_wordlimit,numeric] or something like that to the custom options. I think this should be doable.

Note also that we have streamlined the specification of essay and cloze exercises in the development version (which unfortunately still hasn't been released to CRAN). The basic specification of an essay can already be obtained with just:

extype: string
exstringtype: essay

For the finetuning the exextra options can still be used, though.

essay question imnmoodle: maximal number of characters [ Reply ]
By: Sigbert Klinke on 2022-08-08 07:31

[forum:49429]

Hi,

I used the following meta information for an essay question:

extype: string
exsolution: nil
exextra[essay,logical]: TRUE
exextra[essay_format,character]: editor
exextra[essay_required,logical]: TRUE
exextra[essay_fieldlines,numeric]: 5
exmaxchars: 1000, 10, 50
exname: zr-komponenten-1.Rmd

I hoped that the answer could have at max 1.000 characters. But in Moodle I could enter more than 10.000 characters. Even when I downloaded the answers it had all the characters.

Is there a way to limit the number of characters? I do not want the students to write me a novel as answer ;)

Or is an essay question the wrong type for this?

Thanks Sigbert