CorrectWriting Auto-feedback question implementation
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Goal
This question type goal was to simplify report of student mistakes in a shortanswer question, when student is learning programming language or in simple cases of natural language learning, when student must write correct expression, and we should give him information about skipping some words or placing words in incorrect order. This also could be useful, when we don't give actual information about what words (or some kinds of symbols) was moved or absent in answer, but their meaning, thus forcing student to know what does this part of symbol means.
Examples
Please, consider the following tasks.
Function header in C language
Student must write simple function header for function, that is described naturally: void function(int abc, char def), with following descriptions of parts:
- void
- type of returned value
- function
- function name
- (
- bracket (or opening bracket for function arguments)
- int
- first argument type
- abc
- first argument name
- ,
- argument list separator
- char
- second argument type
- def
- second argument name
- )
- bracket (or closing bracket for function arguments)
If student submits the following answer, like: void function(abc, def), question type will produce the following output:
- first argument type was skipped
- second argument type was skipped
English language sentence:
Student must write simple sentence, while learning foreign language: The cat ate the mouse, with following descriptions of parts
- The
- definite article
- cat
- subject
- ate
- verb
- the
- definite article
- mouse
- complement
- .
- sentence ending point
If student submits the following answer, like: The cat eat the mouse, question type will produce the following output:
- "eat" is odd in response
- verb is absent in response
- sententence ending point is absent in response.
How input is splitted
This tiny parts, that answer is split to are called tokens, which are smallest parts of answer, that have sense to split to. For each of them, teacher can supply a description, which gives a student information about, what are the information behind token (and also can be used to hide true token information, if student must learn about it). For natural languages, tokens can be words, symbols, and for programming languages they can be such as described in their lexical definitions. Teacher can leave a token without description and his bare symbols will be used, when generating text about mistakes.