This is a simple python script that allows to generate rapid, randomized in-class quizzes from a predefined set of questions. Quizlet allows:
- to quickly generate a quiz from a set of questions, without having to manually select the questions.
- to generate a quiz that is different from the one generated for another group of students.
- to random assign a different group to a student at every iteration.
- to quickly grade the quizzes.
The questions are stored in a csv file, with the following format:
[Question Group], Question, Answer
- Question group - optional - integer value that allows to group questions together. If not specified, the question will be assigned to different groups. The questions in this same group will NOT be assigned to the same quiz group.
- Question - the question to be asked.
- Answer - the answer to the question.
Note: the csv file must be comma-separated and must not contain any empty lines.
The students are stored in a csv file, with the following format:
Name, Surame, Student ID
- Name - the name of the student.
- Surname - the surname of the student.
- Student ID - the student ID as a sequence of numbers and letters (it is used to compute student groups).
The JSON file is used to configure the quiz generation. The following parameters are available:
- name (string, optional): Title of your quiz. It is recommended to include the date.
- question_grouping (boolean, optional): Determines if the questions are grouped in exclusive sets. Default value is false.
- students_list (string, required): File with a list of students.
- questions_list (string, required): File with a list of questions.
- questions_count (integer, required): Number of questions in the quiz.
- group_count (integer, required): Number of groups in the quiz.
- group_computation (array, optional): An array of arrays representing computations for each group. Each sub-array contains a prefix item representing the operation ("add", "subtract", "multiply", "sum", or "take") followed by an integer.
- two_column (boolean, optional): If the number of groups is even, each slide will assign the same question to two different groups. Default value is true.
- repeat_questions (boolean, optional): Allows questions to be repeated on multiple slides. Note that questions will not be repeated within a group. Default value is false.
- slide_template (string, optional): Template of the TeX file used to generate the final presentation. Default value is "quiz_slides_template.tex".
To generate the quiz, run the following command:
python quizler.py <config_file.json>
The group computation is used to assign students to groups. The core idea is that each student is assigned a unique ID (e.g., student ID) and the group computation is used to compute the group number from the student ID. Let's consider the following example:
- The student ID is 123456789.
- The first step is to take three last digits of the student ID: 789.
- The second step is to add 1 to the number: 790.
- The third step is to sum the digits of the number: 7+9+0=16.
- The fourth step is to multiply the number by 2: 16*2=32.
- The fifth step is to compute modulo 5 of the number: 32%5=2.
- The final group number is 2.
The group computation is specified in the JSON file as an array of arrays. Each sub-array contains a prefix item representing the operation ("add", "subtract", "multiply", "sum", or "take") followed by an integer. The operations are applied in the order they are specified in the array.
All the resulting files are stored in the folder named as the configuration file. The script generates the following files:
- questions_in_groups.txt - the list of questions in each group.
- questions_in_groups.tex - the list of questions in each group in TeX format (can be compiled to PDF).
- questions_in_slides_raw.txt - the list of questions in each slide.
- <quiz_name>.tex - the TeX file with the quiz.
- students_groups.vsv - the list of students and their groups.
- students_with_answers.txt - the list of students and the correct answers.
In some cases when there is a large number of groups, it is convinient to have two-column slides. In this case, the same question is assigned to two different groups. This is useful when the number of groups is even. To enable two-column slides, set the "two_column" parameter to true in the JSON configuration file.
In the Examples folder you can find an example configuration file and the corresponding input files.
If you have any questions, please contact me at: tomasz.kucner@aalto.fi
If you find any bugs or have any feature requests, please use the GitHub issue tracker.