Forum: support

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Richard Bilonick on 2018-02-04 05:20	[forum:45609]
Sorry, I've been occupied with other things and had given up on this. If memory serves, I was using Firefox to view things (I rarely use Chrome). So at some point I will give this another try. Thanks for the help.

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Niels Smits on 2017-12-11 16:29	[forum:45504] Untitled.png (11) downloads
Hi Richard, I think it depends on the web browser you use. I just tested Achim's code and converted it using exams2blackboard: exams2blackboard("test.Rnw", converter = "pandoc") and it looked fine, see the screen print. I rendered it in Firefox. Best, Niels

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Niels Smits on 2017-12-11 15:57	[forum:45502]
Hi Richard, In what browser do you render the exam? In Firefox things should look normal. Our students are told not to use other browsers. Niels

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ]
By: Achim Zeileis on 2017-12-10 21:41

[forum:45500]

This sounds painful. I'll ask Niels - the main developer of exams2blackboard() - whether he can share some experience or recommendations.

But I'm not surprised that there is a difference between the editor and the player. It is much harder to write a nice graphical user interface for editing arbitrary XML specifications than it is to simply play it correctly. In the LMS our university uses (OLAT), editing does not work at all.

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ]
By: Richard Bilonick on 2017-12-10 07:39

[forum:45499]

I can view the question text in Blackboard but although it shows the align equations and matrices, there are formatting problems and it looks like the last line of the align* or matrix latex specification shows up after the display of the align* and matrix. Also, any figures appear in small scrollable windows that make it very difficult to view the images.

So I guess the only solutions is to avoid align* and matrix and any other similar latex specifications.

Thanks for making suggestions. I think the best solution would be to be able to use something other than Blackboard.

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Richard Bilonick on 2017-12-10 07:31	[forum:45498]
Let me clarify - the Blackboard editor shows no question or solution text, only the numeric answer and tolerance. Blackboard will display the question text including align* equations and matrix results. (If you have ever used Blackboard, you know it is not an easy system to use.)

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Richard Bilonick on 2017-12-10 07:25	[forum:45497]
OK, I made a mistake and looked at the wrong file. All 9 questions were uploaded. The question with align* shows no question or solution text. The other questions without align* look OK.

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ] By: Richard Bilonick on 2017-12-10 07:08	[forum:45496]
Thanks for the explanation and suggested fix. I added 'converter="pandoc"' to the exams2blackboard call. But it does not fix the problem. Now only part of the first question shows up - the other 8 questions are missing.

RE: Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ]
By: Achim Zeileis on 2017-12-06 08:41

[forum:45490]

Short answer: Try setting converter = "pandoc".

Long answer: When using exams2pdf() or exams2nops(), then pdfLaTeX is used in the background to compile the resulting PDF files. Therefore, you can, in principle, use any LaTeX command provided that you have included the necessary \usepackage{} etc.

However, when converting exercises to HTML - which includes HTML-based exports for e-learning systems like Blackboard, Moodle, etc. - then pdfLaTeX is not involved at all. Instead a HTML converter is used: ttm/tth or pandoc. These support a wide range of standard LaTeX commands but most commands from packages are not supported.

The default is LaTeX-to-HTML/MathML conversion with "ttm" which does not support {align*} environments but {equation} and {eqnarray*}.

Alternatively, one can easily use "pandoc" which also does LaTeX-to-HTML/MathML conversion and supports {align*}. (But as this is somewhat UTF-8-centric I don't use it as default.)

Moreover, pandoc also supports other rendering approaches of mathematical formulae, e.g., through the jsMath or MathJax libraries. Then LaTeX-to-HTML/LaTeX conversion is used, i.e., the mathematical formulae are essentially preserved. In this case, there is also not support for all LaTeX packages but MathJax also provides a wide range of standard commands.

Examples:

## rendering of math via pdfLaTeX
exams2pdf("test.Rnw")

## rendering of math via ttm (does not support {align*})
exams2html("test.Rnw")

## rendering of math via pandoc (supports {align*})
exams2html("test.Rnw", converter = "pandoc")

## rendering of math via MathJax (supports {align*})
exams2html("test.Rnw", converter = "pandoc-mathjax", mathjax = TRUE)

I think that in standard Blackboard installations MathJax is not available. I'm not sure whether it can be plugged it easily (or at all). Personally, I write my exercises using only the basic LaTeX commands supported by every converter because this gives me the most flexibility in using the exercises afterwards. But, of course, you can also choose the higher convenience at the authoring stage of the exercises and use a more specific rendering afterwards.

Exam question with align and/or matrix do not translate correctly to Blackboard [ Reply ]
By: Richard Bilonick on 2017-12-06 05:25

[forum:45489]

test.Rnw (4) downloads

When I create an exam item with equations using align:

\begin{align*}
X_{1j} &= \alpha_1 + \beta_1 \mu_j + \epsilon_{1j} \\
X_{2j} &= \alpha_2 + \beta_2 \mu_j + \epsilon_{2j} \\
X_{3j} &= \alpha_3 + \beta_3 \mu_j + \epsilon_{3j}
\end{align*}

it does not translate correctly using exam2blackboard. All the Greek letters are missing as are curly brackets and it's not formated as equations with subscripts etc. In looks like this:

X_1j= _1 + _1 _j + _1j
X_2j= _2 + _2 _j + _2j
X_3j= _3 + _3 _j + _3j

I've attached an example .Rnw file that exhibits this behavior. This was taken from a much larger item where all use of align failed. Using equation environment it works fine. Also, matrices do not translate. Much of the text no longer appears. The created pdf version is perfect. The Blackboard version is completely mangled. So long as I don't include align or matrix, it translates OK.