Scoring Methods Overview

BetterExaminations Online auto-scores maths questions using various scoring methods

BetterExaminations Online auto-scores maths questions using various scoring methods that fall in to two categories:

• evaluation types
• form checking.

Evaluation type methods cover the main three methods you will need to know about for authoring maths questions. Most of the time, you will be using one of these methods in Question validation.

Form checking covers the rest of the scoring methods; the primary purpose of these methods is to check that the student response matches a particular form specified by the author.

Scoring methods can be used alone, and you can also combine methods for more thorough validation.

Evaluation Types

equivSymbolic (symbolic equivalence)

Checks that the student response and the answer set by the author are symbolically equivalent in meaning even if they are in different forms.

equivLiteral (literal equivalence)

Checks that the student response and the answer set by the author are equivalent and in the same form.

equivValue (value equivalence)

Checks that the student response value and the value set by the author are equivalent - differs from equivSymoblic because it can be used with units of measurement and does not work with variables.

Form Checking

isSimplified (simplification)

Checks that the student response is in the most simplified form of the expression entered in validation by the author.

isFactorised (factorization)

Checks that the student response is in a factorized form of the expression entered in validation by the author.

isExpanded (expansion)

Checks that the student response is in an expanded form of the expression entered in validation by the author.

isTrue (boolean evaluation)

Checks that the student's response is true; this is mainly used with boolean operators.

isUnit (unit comparison)

Checks that the student's response is in a specified form of units set by the author.

stringMatch (string comparison)

Checks that the student's response string matches the authors; used for math fragments and is not mathematic.

equivSyntax (syntax comparison)

Checks that the student's response matches a specific syntax set by the author.