gift
<entry-title>GIFT Syntax</entry-title>
- short URL
- http://bit.ly/giftax
The GIFT picoformat allows writing multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank (also called short answer or missing word), matching, and numerical quiz questions in a simple text format.
The GPLed Moodle Course/Learning Management System can import and export questions in the GIFT format.
Format
GIFT quiz questions must be encoded in utf-8 characters, and are delimited by blank lines. A question may be preceded by a title inside a pair of double colons and must include or be followed by an answer specification in curly braces. Examples are shown below.
Symbols | Use |
---|---|
// text | Comment until end of line (optional) |
::title:: | Question title (optional) |
text | Question text (becomes title if no title specified) |
{ | Start answer(s) -- without any answers, text is a description of following questions |
{T} or {F} | True or False answer; also {TRUE} and {FALSE} |
{ ... =right ... } | Correct answer for multiple choice, (multiple answer?) or fill-in-the-blank |
{ ... ~wrong ... } | Incorrect answer for multiple choice or multiple answer |
{ ... =item -> match ... } | Answer for matching questions |
#feedback text | Answer feedback for preceding multiple, fill-in-the-blank, or numeric answers |
{# | Start numeric answer(s) |
answer:tolerance | Numeric answer accepted within ± tolerance range |
low..high | Lower and upper range values of accepted numeric answer |
=%n%answer:tolerance | n percent credit for one of multiple numeric ranges within tolerance from answer |
} | End answer(s); additional text may follow for fill-in-the-blank |
\character | Backslash escapes the special meaning of ~, =, #, {, }, and : |
\n | Places a newline in question text -- blank lines delimit questions |
Examples
// true-false ::Q1:: 1+1=2 {T} // not sure if comments are okay here // multiple choice with specific feedback ::Q2:: What's between orange and green in the spectrum? {=yellow # correct! ~red # wrong, it's yellow ~blue # wrong, it's yellow} // fill-in-the-blank ::Q3:: Two plus {=two =2} equals four. // matching ::Q4:: Which animal eats which food? { =cat -> cat food =dog -> dog food } // math range question -- note: {#1..5} is the same range ::Q5:: What is a number from 1 to 5? {#3:2} // multiple numeric answers with partial credit and feedback ::Q7:: When was Ulysses S. Grant born? {# =1822:0 # Correct! You get full credit. =%50%1822:2 # He was born in 1822. You get half credit for being close. } // essay ::Q8:: How are you? {} // alternate layout ::Title :: Question { =Correct answer 1 =Correct answer 2 ~Wrong answer 1 #Response to wrong answer 1 ~Wrong answer 2 #Response to wrong answer 2 }
- Note: the table and examples above were adapted from and then migrated back to the GPL-licensed Moodle site, not copied from there.
Categories
Question categories may be specified by preceding them with
$CATEGORY: path/name
with a blank line before and after. That sets the following questions' category name or pathname.
Case insensitive
Alphabetic case-sensitive comparison is off by default, but may be enabled for short answer (fill-in-the-blank) questions that need them (usually a very unlikely occurrence, except, e.g., in chemistry formulae) with:
$question->usecase = 1;
Extensions
Learner adaptation
Still to be done to extend the format for learner adaptivity (per, for example, del Soldato, T. & du Boulay, B. (1995) "Implementation of Motivational Tactics in Tutoring Systems," Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 6(4): 337-78) is to add optional prerequisite and relative difficulty links to other questions (titles can be used) and optional question help text at two levels of specificity:
- relations to other questions
- set of questions which help answer this question
- set of questions which answering this question helps answer
(Can some of the directed graph of which questions assist in the answering of other questions be derived from categorization or must it be stored completely explicitly?)
- set of relations to other questions by relative difficulty; for each:
- another question
- more or less difficult, and how much
- general help (optional)
- specific help (optional)
Accuracy review
It would also help to be able to specify the state of the question in a review system:
- incomplete
- (ungrammatical, ambiguous, non-sequitur, implies false assumption, circular, dependent on future circumstance or decision, etc.)
- open
- hypothetical (also open -- but less so?)
- answered ("proposed"?)
- reviewed
- complete (passed review)
- asked
- scored
- challenged
- assessed
- challenged
- scored
- asked
- rejected (failed review or assessment)
- complete (passed review)
- reviewed
Possible choices
Perhaps comments with special keywords can be used following the questions. For example:
::milk-color // title; not sure if comment ok here :: What color is milk? { // question =white // answer } // helps-answer: latte-color // helps if you know this // easier-than: sky-color, // this question is easier // shroedinger-eqn%1% // need a numeric quantity for relative difficulty -- syntax ok? // general-help: Think about full milk bottles. // general help // specific-help: It's the same color as chalk. // specific help // review-state: proposed // not sure about this ($proposed or *...?)
We could use these field keywords:
// helps-answer: title[, title...] // helped-by: title[,...] // easier-than: title[%n%][,...] // harder-than: title[%n%][,...] // general-help: text // already generalfeedback? // specific-help: text // review-state: text
That would apparently cover all the extension requirements. The reflexive links (helps/helped, easier/harder) can be implicit where they aren't specified. Not sure whether it's a good idea to specify summary statistics from question fields as they might exist in a database. Maybe that should be specified but discouraged in practice, because some of the metadata grows every time a question is answered.
Please post character counts here
I've asked for a count of the characters @, !, $, *, ;, and _ in {answer specifications} at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=143213 -- if you are responding, please never mind. Thanks anyway! JSalsman 05:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
See also
- 5-page reference (PDF)
- picoformats