Getting started¶
Welcome to questioned.
This page will guide you through generating your first exam and show you some of the features of questioned. If you have not yet installed questioned, please see the Installation Guide.
Running Questioned¶
Questioned can be run by executing qst from the shell.
Running questioned without any arguments will produce a simple help text:
Usage: qst [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
Questioned is a tool for generating random exams. These exams are exported
in markdown.
Options:
--help Show this message and exit.
Commands:
generate-exam Exam generation command entrypoint.
The --help flag may be passed to any commandto show a
similar help text for that command.
For example, with the generate-exam command:
Usage: qst generate-exam [OPTIONS]
Exam generation command entrypoint.
Options:
-f, --specfile FILE Path to exam specification file
-o, --output_file FILE The file to write the exam to.
-d, --debug
-t, --output_format TEXT
--help Show this message and exit.:
A simple exam spec¶
Generating an exam in questioned starts with an exam spec file. This file contians the basic information about the layout and questions in your exam, as well as information about the questions themselves.
The exam spec file is formatted as a yaml file. By convention this file is
called exam_spec.yml. Questioned will automatically search for a file
of this name in the current working directory and use it as input. A file may
otherwise be specified using the -f flag.
A very simple exam_spec.yml may look like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | meta:
title: "Test Exam"
introduction: "Have fun!"
exam_content:
- type: ManualOpenQuestion
count: 1
manual_open_questions:
- question: "Isn't this great!?"
answer: yes
|
This will create a very simple exam with only one question.
- There are three main blocks in this spec:
- meta
- exam_content
- manual_open_questions
The meta block allows us to define contextual information about our exam.
Think of this as the first part of a traditional exam paper. This contains
the title of the exam, and a (usually) short introductory text.
The exam_content block allows us to define the layout of our exam. In this
case we have specified we want only a single open question section. Using the
type field we specifiy which question type we want, the count field then
allows us to specify how many of these questions we want.
Please note that adding a count higher than the amount of provided questions will cause the program to fail.
In this case we have opted for a single ManualOpenQuestion.
(a full listing of question types can be found at Question Listing )
This question type will randomly select a sample of questions from the
manual_open_questions block. Since we only have a single question, it will
always select that one.
To now finally generate the exam, we execute the following command:
$ qst generate-exam -f exam_spec.yml -o exam.md
This command will read the spec from exam_spec.yml and write the exam to
exam.md. The output file will now contain:
Test Exam
=========
Have fun!This exam contains 1 questions.
## Questions
### Question 1
Isn't this great!?
## Answers
1. True
Rendering to different formats¶
Questioned can output to multiple formats. At the time of writing, these formats are supported:
- markdown
- blackboard
The different output formats can be selected using the -t flag.
For example, the following command will write out a blackboard-importable questions file:
$ qst generate-exam -f exam_spec.yml -o exam.txt -t blackboard
The file exam.txt will then contain the following output:
FIB Isn't this great!? True
This file can then be imported into a blackboard exam.
Grouping Questions¶
It is possible to divide your manually entered questions into groups.
You can then specify from which group you wish the questions to be
picked in the section in the exam_layout.
For example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 | exam_content:
- type: ManualOpenQuestion
count: 1
group: "graphs"
- type: ManualOpenQuestion
count: 1
group: "editors"
- type: ManualOpenQuestion
count: 1
group: "opinions"
manual_open_questions:
- question: "does this graph look cool?"
answer: 'yes'
image: "testimage.png"
group: "graphs"
- question: "do you like computers?"
group: "opinions"
answer: 'yes'
- question: "what is the best text editor?"
group: "editors"
answer: "vim"
- question: "is c beter than java?"
answer: "obviously"
group: "opinions"
- question: "can you do conversion questions?"
answer: "maybe"
|
Using this exam spec, the generated exam will contain:
- One question which has group ‘graphs’
- One question which has group ‘editors’
- One question which has group ‘opinions’
A more complex exam spec¶
Now that we’ve learned how to create a simple exam_spec, we can expand upon that spec to create a larger, more varied exam.
Let us take the following exam_spec.yml as an example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 | meta:
title: Computer Architectures Practice Exam
introduction: |
Welcome to this computer architectures practice exam.
* The exam must be completed within 90 minutes.
* You may not use a calculator.
* Please clearly note your name and student number on each page.
Good luck!
exam_content:
- type: ParsonsProblem
count: 1
- type: LogicProblem
count: 5
- type: RadixConversionQuestion
count: 10
- type: ManualOpenQuestion
count: 2
- type: ManualMultipleChoiceQuestion
count: 1
manual_open_questions:
- question: "Does this graph look cool?"
answer: 'Yes'
image: "testimage.png"
- question: "Do you like computers?"
answer: 'Yes'
manual_multiple_choice_questions:
- question: "What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
randomize_order: False
answers:
- "-1": False
- "12": False
- "24": False
- "42": True
parsons_problems:
- description: "Pyramid printing function."
code: |
#include<stdio.h>
int main() {
int i, j, rows;
printf("Enter number of rows: ");
scanf("%d", &rows);
for (i=1; i<=rows; ++i) {
for (j=1; j<=i; ++j)
{ printf("* "); }
printf("\n");}
return 0;}
|
This larger exam spec contains more blocks, but the basic structure remains
the same. We still define our exam title and introduction in the meta block.
We still define our layout in the exam_content block.
Let us walk through the exam_content block item-by-item:
We start off the exam with a single ParsonsProblem.
These require the student to reassemble a piece of jumbled code based on its
description. This question type requires some manually input information, which
we provide via the parsons_problems block.
Then we move onto the next item LogicProblem.
We specify we would like five of these. As these require no further information,
we need not specify a block for it.
After these questions we add 10 instances of the RadixConversionQuestion.
These also require no extra information, so we can move on.
We now a section of two ManualOpenQuestion questions as we did in the earlier example.
We close the exam with a single ManualMultipleChoiceQuestion question.
We define the pool of questions to choose from with the
manual_multiple_choice_questions block.
This exam_spec.yml will generate an exam similar to the following:
Though question order may differ within sections
Computer Architectures Practice Exam
====================================
Welcome to this computer architectures practice exam.
* The exam must be completed within 90 minutes.
* You may not use a calculator.
* Please clearly note your name and student number on each page.
Good luck!
This exam contains 19 questions.
## Questions
### Question 1
Please reassemble the following code snippets to form a Pyramid printing function..
#include<stdio.h>
printf("\n");}
for (i=1; i<=rows; ++i) {
printf("Enter number of rows: ");
int main() {
int i, j, rows;
return 0;}
for (j=1; j<=i; ++j)
{ printf("* "); }
scanf("%d", &rows);
### Question 2
Given the following expression:
q = ((c or b) and (c or a))
And the following starting values:
a = False
b = True
c = False
What is the resulting value for q?
### Question 3
Given the following expression:
q = ((c and a) or (b nor c))
And the following starting values:
a = True
b = False
c = True
What is the resulting value for q?
### Question 4
Given the following expression:
q = (((a nor b) xor (b and c)) and a)
And the following starting values:
a = True
b = True
c = False
What is the resulting value for q?
### Question 5
Given the following expression:
q = (b or (b or c))
And the following starting values:
a = False
b = False
c = True
What is the resulting value for q?
### Question 6
Given the following expression:
q = ((b and c) or (b and a))
And the following starting values:
a = False
b = True
c = True
What is the resulting value for q?
### Question 7
Convert 0b11010101 from binary to decimal.
### Question 8
Convert 249 from decimal to hexadecimal.
### Question 9
Convert 0xf5 from hexadecimal to decimal.
### Question 10
Convert 152 from decimal to hexadecimal.
### Question 11
Convert 166 from decimal to hexadecimal.
### Question 12
Convert 0b10111010 from binary to decimal.
### Question 13
Convert 0b11000011 from binary to decimal.
### Question 14
Convert 0xeb from hexadecimal to decimal.
### Question 15
Convert 135 from decimal to hexadecimal.
### Question 16
Convert 190 from decimal to hexadecimal.
### Question 17
Do you like computers?
### Question 18
<img src="data:image/png;base64, [IMAGE DATA LEFT OUT]" /><br/><br/>Does this graph look cool?
### Question 19
What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?
- -1
- 12
- 24
- 42
## Answers
1. #include<stdio.h>
int main() {
int i, j, rows;
printf("Enter number of rows: ");
scanf("%d", &rows);
for (i=1; i<=rows; ++i) {
for (j=1; j<=i; ++j)
{ printf("* "); }
printf("\n");}
return 0;}
2. False
3. True
4. False
5. True
6. True
7. 213
8. 0xf9
9. 245
10. 0x98
11. 0xa6
12. 186
13. 195
14. 235
15. 0x87
16. 0xbe
17. Yes
18. Yes
19. 42
