Formulas question type

Note: This page is a work-in-progress. Feedback and suggested improvements are welcome. Please join the discussion on moodle.org or use the page comments.

As there is no or little difference in the Formulas question type plugin for recent versions of Moodle (2.0 and above), the documentation for the Formulas question type has been moved to one location (the present page).

The documentation herein applies to all recent versions of Moodle including the current Moodle 3.4.

Usage

You would enter your 'sets' (called 'lists' in formulas questions) in the 'Random variables' field when creating question as:

a = {100, 125, 150, 175, 200};
b = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
c = {10, 12, 14, 16, 18};

When an attempt is started a, b, and c will take a value drawn from the corresponding list at random.

You can then define other variables depending of these ones in the 'Global variables' field if you want. For instance if you need the value of a+2*b somewhere in your question text or Combined or general feedback, just define

d=a+2*b; in 'Global variables'

Once you have defined your variables, you can use them in all the question's texts putting them in curly braces (for instance {a}, {b} or {d}). This is true not only for the Question text but also for all feedbacks and hints when you use interactive behaviour (The author thinks that the fact that variables can't be used in calculated question's feedback is a serious problem to give students an appropriate feedback using the values they saw in their attempt)

Other advantages

• Another big advantage of formulas questions is that a question can have several 'parts' and all parts using the same variables; and even more, the answer to each part can not only be a number but a vector if you want.
• Last thing, formulas questions has a complete unit system that is quite useful for engineering

Author

Jean-Michel Védrine

Moodle versions

2012062500 (Moodle 2.3) or newer

Translations available

This plugin is also available in Mexican Spanish

Installation

• It's a Moodle plugin, so you must install it (or your administrator must do it).
• Currently formulas question type plugin is not available in the Moodle plugins Directory
• You must download it from the author's Github repository.
• And you must install another plugin (Tim Hunt's adaptive multipart behaviour) so that it works.

Drawbacks

• Mastering formulas questions is difficult, there is a learning curve
• Documentation is not very good, it was written by Hon Wai Lo (original author of the formulas questions for Moodle 1.9 and 2.0, Jean-Michel Védrine upgraded it for Moodle 2.3 to 2.8), unfortunately Jean-Michel Védrine never had time to improve it
• It's a Moodle plugin, so you must install it (or your administrator must do it). Currently formulas question type plugin is not available in the Moodle plugins Directory, you must download it from the author's Github repository. And you must install another plugin (Tim Hunt's adaptive multipart behaviour) so that it works.
• As any addon, you will be dependent in the future of the maintainer to upgrade it when a new Moodle version is released

See also

• this forum thread.
• Github documentation for the Formulas question type at https://github.com/jmvedrine/moodle-qtype_formulas

Translations available

The Formulas question plugin is available in the following langages:

• English
• French
• Spanish (Mexican)

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