{"id":79,"date":"2010-08-22T16:30:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T16:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=79"},"modified":"2010-08-26T15:19:56","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T15:19:56","slug":"using-different-variants-of-icma-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=79","title":{"rendered":"Using different variants of iCMA questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Open University we use different variants of our iCMA questions. So, to take a very simple example, when one student receives the question ‘Evaluate 3 + 7’, another might receive the question ‘Evaluate \u00a0‘4 + 5’. In summative use, different variants limit the opportunities for plagiarism. In formative-only use, different variants provide students with extra opportunities for practice.<\/p>\n

Some question authors will allow variables to be generated automatically,\u00a0which\u00a0offers the potential\u00a0to create a\u00a0very large number of different variants from a single stem. Perhaps that’s a good thing. But I am always concerned that<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. variants generated in this way may not be of sufficiently similar difficulty (a topic to be discussed in future posts)<\/li>\n
  2. some versions of questions may look unnatural or ‘ugly’ (e.g. ‘Evaluate 4 + -5’)<\/li>\n
  3. In the event of queries, I want to know what version of a question each student has received, not just the template used to generate the question.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At the Open University we use different variants of our iCMA questions. So, to take a very simple example, when one student receives the question ‘Evaluate 3 + 7’, another might receive the question ‘Evaluate \u00a0‘4 + 5’. In summative … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[17,348],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-variants","tag-icmas","tag-variants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}