When we talk about the “texts of an exercise”, we talk about all the texts that can be edited in the “Texts” tab on the “Edit Exercise” page.
Types of text fields
The text fields that are visible depend on the exercise type you have chosen. For example, in the open type exercise you see the following text fields: title, question, solution, pre input 1 and post input 1. Text fields consist of a grey box at the top and a white box at the bottom. You can type your text in the grey box. The white box will display a preview of your text as it will appear in the exercise.
The most common text fields are explained below:
title (optional): this is the title of the exercise.
question: this is the question that the student needs to answer.
solution: this is the worked-out solution text. The student can only see it if they press “Solution” or if they give an answer that is marked correct. The student answer is not compared to this text to determine if the answer is correct. Instead, the solution to which the student answer should be compared is written in the “Solutions” tab. An example of how to write a nice worked-out solution using LaTex can be found here.
intro (optional): this is an optional introduction to the question. It is turned off by default. To make the intro text field appear, click on the blue button “+Add” -> “Intro”.
final comment (optional): this text is displayed after the student finishes the exercise. It can for example be used to show a sketch of the graph that the exercise was about. It is turned off by default. To make the final comment text field appear, click on the blue button “+Add” -> “Final comment”.
hint (optional): this is a hint for the student. The student can only see it if they press “Hint”. You can add as many hints as you like. When the student presses “Hint”, hint 1 appears. When the student presses “Hint” again, hint 2 appears etc. Hints are turned off by default. To make a hint text field appear, click on the blue button “+Add” -> “New hint”. The order of hints cannot be changed. More information on hints can be found here.
Layout of texts
You can use plain text and HTML for general markup and either LaTeX or asciimathml for the markup of mathematics. A HTML editor menu is available when clicking on a text field. If you cannot see the menu, try clicking away from the text field and clicking on the text field again.
More information on using HTML for text markup can be found in the authoring manual under “Texts”.
When using LaTex in a text field, you should use the delimiters #...# (for in-line tex) or \[...\] (for centered alignment on a separate line). Example:
It is also possible to put tables, column divisions, links, images, molecule drawings and (Geogebra) applets in the text fields. Click here for more information on adding Geogebra applets.
Furthermore it is possible to use variable texts, that are for example dependent on the value of a specific variable defined in the “Variables” tab. More information can be found here.
Automatic replacement in text
Some character are automatically replaced by other ones. For example, a double minus is automatically replaced by a plus sign.
The table below gives an overview of the automatic replacements. The last two columns indicate how to escape the automatic replacement.
